While listening to Melissa Czarnik’s Raspberry Jesus, her second album on Milwaukee based label Hyperdrive Motivator Productions, I found myself repeatedly picking up the CD cover and looking at her picture in amazement. Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but I needed to remind myself that the soulful hip-hop jams I was hearing were indeed coming from this little fresh faced hipster looking girl. Czarnik is a native of Milwaukee and her first album Strawberry Cadillac (so like a girl from the Midwest to look towards a fruit stand for album title inspiration) established her reputation as being a cut off the Lauren Hill block. Raspberry Jesus is a refreshing change of pace from the wide wide ocean of indie rock we’ve all been toot tooting along in. And the fact that the second song off the album, “Bedtime Stories” boasts having been written about in a magazine that rhymes with Itch Magazine didn’t make me like her any less. Nope, not one bit. In fact it gives me great pleasure to provide her with another publication’s name that would quite smoothly replace the former in any upcoming live performances.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYUI28oY5b0 425×344]
