There’s a different level and type of improvisation at work within the Trio. With Stoyanova and Thompson required to step into a more rhythmic role, it’s the already free-spirited Trott who plays looser. Without the additional sound of drums and guitar — and both guys play loud — she’s able to weave her already yoga-flexible voice into even more ornate curlicues, and to tease and hold notes with greater impetuousness, although the use of that word may underplay her musical intentions.
“We make ourselves very vulnerable in the Trio,” Trott says. “I’m much more of a warrior when I’m performing with the band. I can reach a certain level of ecstasy just being in front of people performing who are receptive. I feel like I have a message to give. I haven’t quite fully explored it in my art yet, but I’m getting closer every year to what the energy is I’m trying to express. And I think people are getting a lot more of that in the raw with the Trio.”
When I meet the Trio at the Middle East, Trott is wearing a little drawstring bag around her neck, dangling off a necklace that also sports a coyote tooth. In New Orleans, they’d call it a gris-gris bag. In Mississippi, a mojo bag. To Trott, whose heritage is part Native American, it’s a medicine bag. It was given to her, full of lovely polished stones, that afternoon by a homeless woman in Salem.
“Unusual things happen to Kara all the time,” Stoyanova says. The singer is also a lightning rod for some of the animosity Fluttr Effect generate. She took flack for wearing a white wedding dress and splashing herself in red paint the night the Trio played the Lizard, a notion she says came to her in a dream. But her vocal command and knack for physically wrapping herself around her vocal lines have made her one of the more interesting live performers in a music scene that sometimes feels mired in ’80s garage rock, dumb-ass punk, and tongue-in-cheek posturing. (Not to suggest that those styles don’t have their place or can’t also be done with flair.)
Fluttr Effect aren’t perfect. At times they seem a bit overblown and, with the full band, emotionally limited. But they’re on their own path — and it seems to be aiming them toward a national breakout.
“We’ve had a couple offers from labels, but our ultimate goal is to remain independent and keep going as we’re going,” Stoyanova says. “We really enjoy what we’re doing.”
Fluttr Effect/Fluttr Effect Trio + Count Zero + Ghettobillies | T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline St, Cambridge | April 22 | 617.492.BEAR
On the Web
Fluttr Effect: http://www.fluttreffect.com/
