SONG OF THE DAY

“Blow Away” by A Fine Frenzy (Bomb In A Birdcage, Virgin Records, 2009). Written by Alison Sudol.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– Bomb in a Birdcage is the second album from singer-songwriter Alison Sudol a.k.a. A Fine Frenzy.

– The album had a career high debut for A Fine Frenzy at #28.

– Alison Sudol (born December 23, 1984), known professionally as A Fine Frenzy (formerly Alison Monro) is an American alternative singer and songwriter and pianist.

– Born in Seattle, Washington to two dramatic arts teachers, Sudol and her mother moved to Los Angeles after her parents divorced when she was five years old. She didn’t see her father often while she was growing up.

– She grew up listening to a wide range of music, including Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, and swing.

– She graduated from high school at the age of 16, and considered herself “nerdy and quiet.” She stated in an interview, “I was so nervous about going into college… and super young. I figured I would take two years and try to find out what I was doing with music. And when I was 18, I was just so deep into it that I didn’t want to stop.”

– Sudol had a passion for literature, and immersed herself in the works of C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, Lewis Carroll, Anthony Trollope, and Charles Dickens. Sudol has often referred to the literary influences on her music. More recently she has disclosed that she is also pursuing a secondary career as a writer. In an interview she said she was writing a children’s story in the “Narnia” tradition, a fantasy featuring animals.

– Her artist name, “A Fine Frenzy”, is taken from a verse in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Theseus, Act 5, Scene 1: “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzyrolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven”).

– After teaching herself to play the piano, she began putting her creative energy into writing songs.