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Music by FFWD Staff Eleni Mandell Kaos Jazz and Blues Bistro Wednesday, November 1 The ending of the classic 1949 film The Third Man, easily rates as one of the great moments in popular cinema: Alida Valli stalks past Joseph Cotten, into close-up, and then out of frame while Anton Karas’s zither score resonates with the melancholic mood of the final shot. Valli’s rebuff displays her cool reproach even as it suggests that somewhere, deep down, her heart is shattered. It’s the quintessential image of the femme fatale – forever mysterious and unknowable, she’ll never allow her true thoughts and feelings to obscure her outward dignity and poise. It’s little surprise that sultry, noir-soaked chanteuse Eleni Mandell also admires The Third Man – although she’s much too personable and self-effacing to be mistaken for a disingenuous fatale, her songs are nevertheless populated with characters like Valli’s and the many men who disappoint them. "In the Third Man, I love that the characters are complex and they’re not clear cut," she says. "You sort of really sympathize with Harry Lime, but he’s also the bad guy that’s killing all these people with the crappy penicillin. The Joseph Cotten character is kind of a bumbling stupid American, but you also sympathize with him, and then even the woman (Alida Valli’s character), she’s kind of hard." Mandell’s affinity for multidimensional characters is palpable in the songs on her new album, Thrill, a record that makes it easy to hear the influence of the pulp writers she admires most – Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Charles Bukowski, and Charles Willeford. However, her lyrics most closely approximate the atmosphere of fatalistic romanticism in their work – the recognition that relationships between people are often fraught with deceit and false hopes. Mandell admits that her songs are dark and melancholic, but she points out that they also contain a wry, slightly offbeat sense of humour – she’s the kind of songwriter who pens an "assassination song" about one of her ex-boyfriends, called "Taking You Out," that cleverly plays on its title phrase. "Surprisingly, with (the guy that) "Taking You Out" is about, he really loves that," she laughs. "Maybe he doesn’t really get it." As interesting musically as it is lyrically, Thrill confounds easy categorization with its effortless hybridization of different styles and genres. Rooted in jazz and pop, with the basic underpinnings of guitar, bass, and drums, the instrumentation on the album also includes marimba, accordion, vibes, trumpet, trombone, viola and even a little zither, in tribute to Mandell’s favourite movie. "I just don’t want to have to only do one thing. I think most artists do that and I don’t know why. Even if you listen to early Stones records, there’s a lot of country, there’s a lot of blues, and there’s complete rock ’n’ roll and soul, too. I like that records used to have that kind of variety and still had the unique sound of the band without that being just one specific kind of sound." At the same time, Mandell’s distinctive voice is the most singularly expressive element in all her songs. An alto with impressive range, Mandell is as comfortable with a breathy whisper as she is belting out one of her more venomous numbers. She cites X, the legendary punk band from her home town of Los Angeles, as a major influence on her vocal style. "I wanted to sound more like John Doe than Exene," she says. "I also listened to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but I really never thought of imitating the way they sounded. More, I wanted to sound like a man so maybe that’s why I developed my lower range. It’s also natural – my speaking voice is kind of low, too. When I started consciously writing songs to perform, I just thought ‘How can I sound more like a man?’ I didn’t want to sound all girly and ethereal." Mandell’s solo performance in Calgary this week should allow her to showcase her considerable vocal abilities, and with the minimal accompaniment of her own guitar, it will be the perfect opportunity for a new audience to become acquainted with this talented songwriter.

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