Madi Diaz's "Plastic Moon"
“Plastic Moon,” Madi Diaz (tinyOGRE)
Madi Diaz is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter who grew up in Pennsylvania’s Amish country the daughter of a Peruvian mom and a Danish dad. She attended Philadelphia’s School of Rock and was consequently featured in the 2005 documentary “Rock School.” She met her music partner, Kyle Ryan, while attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, and the two jetted off to Hawaii to record an album. Diaz dropped out of Berklee and eventually she and Ryan were discovered by a producer in Greenwich Village, which led to her 2010 relocation to Nashville.
It’s hard to reconcile so much storied background with Diaz’s new “Plastic Moon,” which sounds like the humble project of a small-town girl with little experience in the music industry.
The unassuming release is easy to overlook, its folk-steeped, indie-pop arrangements gently presenting subtle hooks, mostly about relationships. Diaz is a solid, but unassuming, singer, not especially distinctive and sometimes even coming across as nonchalant.
Yet she’s not being tentative so much as she’s mining the power of understatement, which works well with her lyrics that reflect emotional inertia — be it a vague, bad feeling (“Johnny”), procrastination (“I Know,” featuring the refrain, “I know I gotta let you go”), or gloomy limbo (“Time,” keyed to the line, “Time will move on before I do”). Even “Let’s Go” is surprisingly languid for its title, with strumming guitars and crescendos of oh-oh-oh’s and oo-oo-oo-oo’s casting a contemplative air.
However, although Diaz gives the impression that most of her relationships end up in flux, she also reveals a rascally side, teasing with fresh-sounding directness on opener “Gimme a Kiss” and exposing her charming stalker tendencies on the folkie “If You Only Knew.”
Ultimately, “Plastic Moon” may not be instantly gratifying, but it offers slow-building reward.
Rating (five possible): 3
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