Harbor Voices
Volume 2 Number 4 | June 2001

Songwriter Abi Tapia - Powerful Voice, Sensual Lyrics (and We're Listening!)

Peer Review by Jason Wilkins

My fellow singer-songwriter Abi Tapia has claimed an unusual pair of influences upon her music: Ani Difranco and Dolly Parton. What do these two women have in common besides Abi's admiration? At least three things: bracing honesty, a frank sensuality, and no interest in taking any guff just because they are women. Abi shares these attributes with Ani and Dolly, as her album, "This Life Will Be Mine" demonstrates.

Abi's greatest strength is her voice, a powerful instrument capable of Ani-worthy bluster and wail, as well as Dolly-style folksiness. Her songs are built around fairly standard folk/country chord progressions. On "This Life Will Be Mine," producer Jeff Ciampa has framed Abi's guitar and voice with spare acoustic arrangements - light percussion, bass and the occasional flourish on the Wurlitzer.

In Abi's best songs she sounds torn between the urge for going and the longing for love. "I'm gonna pack my precious things and leave you here," she sings on one track, but on "Galesburg" she takes the opposite tack: "It's three hours to Galesburg, get in the car/ I miss you baby, so don't be late." In "Back to Back," the singer compromises between leaving and staying: "Tomorrow I'll drive back home/ and you know you're gonna miss me either way/so why would you sleep alone?"

Abi's artistically fruitful romantic indecision reaches a peak on "I'm Not Listening." Abi wrings every ounce of emotion out of the almost unbearable sensual final verse: "Oh, but your hands on my back/ oh, but your lips are on my neck/ oh, our ankles are entwined/ oh, your stomach pressed to mine/ fingers in my curls/ your words in my ear/ telling every part of me that I should stay here…and I'm not listening." (Hard to see why not.)

Abi rarely writes a dull lyric - note the way the verses to "Chocolate" pile up detailed images with great economy - and thus far, her musical skills are lagging a bit behind her verbal acuity. She sometimes attempts to hang five verses on a melody that only remains interesting for three. (Then again, Ani and Dolly have been known to do the same thing.)

I admit to a certain bias - being no stranger to Abi, being thanked in the liner notes - but I consider "This Life Will Be Mine" a remarkably mature piece of work by a songwriter still relatively new to her craft. She gave me one copy for free, and then I was happy to pay for a second. She may not be listening, but as long as she sings, other people will be.