Sarah Pinsker
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Music
Press
The cover art is incredible, and the cool thing is that the music is just as great as the cover art. Impeccably produced and mastered - this is one disc you have to hear." - Maryland Music Monthly
Feet move in three directions while shoulders
move in four. It’s easier than it sounds with the powerful rhythms flowing throughout. Very cool guitar work..." - Eartaste.com
Sarah is a true storyteller. Her lyrics are filled with visual images and unique somewhat strange characters...Sarah's compositions are well produced and enchanting. Her vocals are crisp and captivating. The cover phopto of a child playing plane on the beach captures the spirit of flight and potential that this five track collection holds. Every song is a winner on this EP but of particular note are the first two catchy songs. Sarah Pinsker soars on Wingspan! - Kweevak.com
I'm listening to a singer from Baltimore who I think should be a big star, Sarah Pinsker. She writes some of the best songs I've heard in a long time. She's like a female Tom Waits of the pop world. - Siren Song
Sarah Pinsker is among the reasons I never tire of singer/songwriters. Her album is a dozen tuneful tracks of poppy folky magic. This is really one of those albums where I shouldn't try to pick a favorite, but I cannot help mentioning 'Sweet & Strange', 'Twice the Prince', and 'Pass By' as songs that really grabbed me during the first few listens. I know there's gazillions of songwriters out there who are worthwhile, but if you have room on the list, squeeze Sarah on too. - Indiecator
If it's really good folk-pop songs you love then Charmed (coincidentally the name of Pinsker's debut CD) you will be. Not only will this Baltimore-based artist convince you that "life is sweet and strange", she will also have you singing it too. Her songs have the same magic as the early works of Suzanne Vega and the Indigo Girls." - Rockrgrl Magazine
It should come as no surprise that CHARMED (disappear records) by Sarah Pinsker is a great record. First of all it was produced by SONiA (Rutstein), and features her distinctive vocals on more than half of the album's tracks, as well as her other musical talents on several tracks. More importantly, Pinsker's debut disc is on SONiA's own label, and we know that SONiA can be trusted to give us nothing but the best. Sarah Pinsker certainly qualifies. Part Catie Curtis (read East Coast queer folkie), part Sarah Dougher (read Pacific Northwest queer riot grrl), Pinsker's original songs are catchy and hummable. They will lift your spirits (as in the case of 'Sweet & Strange,' 'Baggage') and then set your spirit free ('Kirkwood I Think,' Reinventing the Wheel,' 'C#m'). Like DiFranco, Pinsker also covers Phil Ochs. Her version of Ochs's 'Cross My Heart' is awe-inspiring. Prepare to be charmed by Sarah Pinsker. - Windy City Times
Discography
Charmed (2000) - Produced by SONiA of disappear fear and released on disappear records.
Wingspan (2003) - EP on reinventing records.
This Is Your Signal (2007) - Full length CD with the Stalking Horses, released on The Beechfields independent label (http://www.thebeechfields.com)
Photos
Bio
Born in New York, and raised everywhere from Texas to Toronto, Sarah Pinsker hasn't stopped moving yet. Though settled in Baltimore, she takes the roads less traveled, frequently. She has played her "blissfully ragged" (Baltimore Magazine) folk-rock songs everywhere from Boston to Seattle, and has gotten lost in almost every state on the map. She gets lost on purpose, because the highways are boring, and so she has skidded down dirt roads in North Carolina, crashed karaoke night at backwoods Pennsylvania bars with her guitar, busked on street corners, and written songs about everything she has seen and everything she hasn’t.
An award-winning fiction writer, Sarah approaches songwriting with the eye and the pen of a born storyteller. She writes songs about the people who have slipped through the cracks: graffiti artists, dustbowl farmers, sideshow stars, a woman who lived as a man aboard a merchant ship, and others who lurk around the dark borders of dreams. In 2006, “Think Third World,” written by Sarah and John Seay, was a finalist in Noel Paul Stookey’s (of Peter Paul & Mary) Music to Life contest.
Though likened to Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Vega, her voice is clearly her own. Sarah's first CD, "Charmed," was released in 2000 on the Baltimore-based label disappear records. It was produced by SONiA Rutstein of disappear fear, who liked the finished product so much she signed Sarah to her label upon the CD's completion. Her second album, the EP "Wingspan", was released in March 2003. Sarah performs both solo and with her band, the Stalking Horses. The first Stalking Horses release, “This is Your Signal,” was released on the independent Beechfields label in 2007.
She has toured the country as part of the Will Folk For Food and City Girl tours, which paired her with a number of up-and-coming singer-songwriters. She has played clubs, festivals and colleges all over the country, from the Paradise Rock Club in Boston to Eddie's Attic in Atlanta, sharing stages with SONiA of disappear fear, We're About 9, the Kennedys, the Nields, and Rod Picott, among others. Look for her on the road, and as reviewer Gregg Shapiro wrote, "prepare to be charmed by Sarah Pinsker."
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