Amalea Tshilds Issue #28

Painted Tiles (Fallen Fan)

By Elizabeth Barker
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 10:10am

Singer-songwriter, chef, and painter Amalea Tshilds co-owns Chicago’s Lula Cafe, the kind of crunchy-chic eatery that serves its French toast with lavender crème anglaise and its peanut butter sandwiches with Indonesian soy sauce. Tshilds’ mild, acoustic guitar-based melodies aren’t nearly as adventurous as her brunch menu, but there’s the same lovely, herbal-tea-on-a-Sunday-morning comfiness that sweetly whisks away the noise and mess of the outside world for a little while. This means that if you’re at all partial to songs that come from noisy, messy places, Painted Tiles most likely won’t be your cup of chamomile.

Despite appearances by members of experimental-indie bands like Tortoise (guitarist Doug McCombs), Califone (guitarist Jim Becker), and Wilco (the band’s former multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach), this nine-track debut feels as safe and serene as the ocean waves and cozy blankets that Tshilds serenades about in her competent, silvery voice.

For most of Painted Tiles, Tshilds and her guest players (including other mellowed-out friends on drums, keyboards, and horns) keep up a lazy summer, hammock-swing tempo that nicely fits her coffeehouse-perfect strumming and pleasant poetry (“The sky breaks in pieces when you’re gone,” she sings on the swirling, briefly jam-band-esque “Parachute,” one of the CD’s most memorable numbers).

It’s not until the penultimate “Flood” that Tshilds goes into full gallop, reworking the tumbleweed-swept sound of “To the Ground” as an alt-country romp peppered with skittering guitars. But on the closing “Luna,” Tshilds slows back down again for seven-plus dreamy minutes of sparse guitar, whispered back-up vocals, and barely-there piano, a spaced-out lullaby so quiet you hardly notice when it’s completely faded out.