Matthew Johnson reviews Long Way From Home for Re:Gen Magazine, 11/29/2007

On their third album, Lovespirals shift away from overt electronica in favor of beautiful, understated folk and blues ballads.

If sophomore album Free and Easy saw Lovespirals’ sound at its biggest, Long Way from Home is the duo’s most intimate, forsaking house beats and jazz flourishes for understated slide guitar and acoustic strums. Ryan Lum’s production is more mature than ever before; unless you really listen for it, you won’t be able to tell that he plays and records all the instruments himself – maybe not even then – and the drums sound warm and clear, betraying no hint of sampler or sequencer. Instead, Lum lets his arrangements take center stage, with emotive guitar solos harmonizing with electric organ on the bluesy ballad “Once in a Blue Moon” and relaxed acoustic strums highlighting jazzy piano chords on “Nocturnal Daze.” Anji Bee’s vocals are beautifully languid, the sweetness swathed in melancholy on the plaintive “Caught in the Groove,” adorned by floating background harmonies on “Treading the Water,” and sensual yet dreary on the pair’s stark rendition of classic spiritual “Motherless Child.” Fans of the pair’s more overtly romantic material will appreciate unabashed love song “This Truth,” and there’s even a hint of the ethereal dreaminess of Lum’s previous project, Love Spirals Downwards, on the fuzzy overlapping guitar tones and meandering vocals of “Sundrenched” and “Lazy Love Days.” It’s not an understatement to call Long Way from Home the duo’s most accomplished work up to date; as enjoyable as their previous explorations of laidback electronica and jazz fusion have been, this album captures Lum and Bee’s warm musical chemistry in a way that previous releases only hinted at.

View the original review at Re:Gen Magazine.

Matt Rowe reviews Long Way From Home for Music Tap, 11/28/2007

The evolution of Lovespirals into the band that they are today has been a long road. From the band’s early years as Love Spirals Downwards — with a vocalist all-but-forgotten for Anji Bee’s lovely, dreamy, and expansive vocal pleasantries — to their current album, Lovespirals have always been a band of change. Their latest, the wonderfully titled Long Way From Home, is one of superior work and can easily rank as the band’s best work in either incarnation.

Still a part of the Dream-Pop sound that formed them, the Anji Bee years of Lovespirals have been an essential element for the band. With her ability to wrap around Ryan Lum’s musical explorations, Lovespirals is not afraid of trying on new clothes, framing them in gorgeous soft tones of various flavours. The album begins with a “career-best” blues song that accentuates the album’s direction. “Caught in the Groove” is a beautifully produced, dream-blues (if I may coin the phrase) song. Using a song as a metaphor for the deterioration of a relationship, this captivating tune is made all the more extraordinary by Lum’s blues guitar.

That same bluesy guitar shows up in “Once in a Blue Moon, and “Nocturnal Daze.” Ryan Lum’s guitar leads have a distinct ’70s feel throughout the album. Some songs recall the past musical history of the band. “Sundrenched” lends itself to the stream of that past. The album closes with the excellent musically and lyrically sex-soaked “Lazy Love Days.”

The needle may be “caught in the groove” but, for me, that’s a good thing where this album is concerned.

View the original post at MusicTap.net

Ned Raggett reviews Long Way From Home for the All Music Guide

For their third album as Lovespirals, Anji Bee and Ryan Lum again create a lush series of songs that synthesizes disparate influences into a warm, enveloping listen. For all that the duo’s roots have been seen as being goth, their previous albums touched on a variety of approaches with aplomb, and at this point it’s just as accurate — and ultimately limiting — to say that Long Way From Home is blues, or country, or rock and roll. It’s a blend that has a low-key presentation, an easygoing pace, and an ear for all kinds of unexpected details that change the feeling of a song in an instant without disrupting it. The traditional standard “Motherless Child,” where the album title comes from, shows this clearly, where the harrowing lament of the lyric becomes a cool flow, Bee’s vocals paying homage to famous interpreters of the song like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday without trying to actually replicate them. Meantime, a song like “Caught in the Groove” has a gentle, echoed percussion flow that sounds like late eighties Cocteau Twins, twangy guitars and piano that suggests majestic early seventies country, and Bee’s coolly sweet vocals calling to mind crooners from an even earlier time. This resplendent variety, which defines the sound of much of the album, helps the band further cement its own protean sound, increasingly recognizable on its own merits rather than just being the sum of its many parts. Some individual moments feel very thrilling — the wheezing guitar/harmonica background to “Treading the Water,” the sudden low-key funk on “Lovelight” — without overwhelming the overall flow, a fine balancing act.

View the original post on the All Music Guide

Cadence Revolution reviews Long Way From Home, 10/27/2007

It’s very rare these days to come across an entire CD which you will listen to over and over from beginning to the end non-stop, and even rarer to find one which makes you want to grab everyone you know and tell them “you must listen to this.”

However such is the case with the third release, Long Way Home, from the California-based duo Lovespirals, consisting of Anji Bee on vocals and Ryan Lum on instruments.

Fusing sounds from jazz, chill, folk, Americana and even a touch of country, this latest release will grab you and wrap you in an aural blanket of warm with a soothing hand on the brow that shows off why the indie music scene is our salvation from the commercial corporate music machine, and Lovespirals is one of it’s shinning stars.

From the opening jazzy/country sound of the aptly named “Caught In The Groove”, to the groovy feel of “This Truth”, to the lazy summer afternoon feeling of “Sundrenched” this CD is a wonderful blend of vocals and music coming together in an intertwining dance of harmony deftly expressing emotions in both delivery and composition.

Perhaps the one track that shows off their ability to combine emotion with production is the track “Motherless Child”, which had been released as a remix by MoShang on his Asian Variations CD earlier this year. On the Long Way Home version, Lovespirals have gone with a less-is-more approach and stripped the song down to the barest and starkest in this presentation.

Anji’s emotion-filled delivery holds nothing back in delivering the full emotion of grief and loss. While Ryan’s haunting and simple layered guitar work echoes her delivery, but neither overpowers the other, and the two come together to powerfully capture the feeling of being alone and isolated.

Throughout Long Way Home, the duo convey a wide range of feelings and emotions as words and music come together or swirl around and through each other in a mesmerizing dance of audio.

Lovespirals have found the perfect balance, resulting in a release that never falters from one track to the next that is rare these days, and is the perfect aural vacation everyone should take at least once a day.

View the original post at Cadence Revolution

RadioGirl reviews Free & Easy

Lovespirals are Anji Bee and Ryan Lum. They create chill music that makes us feel all swank, adult, sexy and in love with love…all at once!!! Their CD Free and Easy was released in late 2005 and is currently in distribution all over the US, Hong Kong and Mexico.

Anji’s name was familiar to us somehow. It turns out a number of years ago, we read a fantastic interview she did with Miranda July. A great read, especially for anyone interested in Ms. July’s early involvement with in the Olympia Scene.

Years later, Anji’s creative path continues to intrigue us. Lovespirals make electro-acoustic pop songs which are dreamy, sensual, smooth and romantic. Ryan’s guitar work incorporates elements of jazz, soul and rock with modern electronic and organic sounds. Anji Bee contributes the lyrics, vocals and vocal arrangements. No auto-tune was used in the recording – preserving the essence of Lovespirals and creating a creamy hi-fi stereo sound.

View the full review at churchofgirl.com

Sheldon T. Nunn reviews Free & Easy

Lovespirals’ latest CD entitled, Free & Easy, continues a formula that has made the duo a recognizable force in smooth jazz arenas; however, much of their music cannot be classified under one umbrella or style. Collectively, Ryan and Anji can be surprisingly creative and inventive, especially on this latest release. One of the more promising components of Free & Easy is that is commercially viable. On previous efforts, Lovespirals have taken an eclectic approach to jazz, which has often left them lacking widespread appeal. Historically, they have drawn upon world, house, light and airy music to make their presence known, which has created a highly evolved level of crossover appeal.

With Ryan serving up a heaping helping of guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion and programming, Anji takes on the tasks of vocals and vocal arrangements. As independent artists and without the support of a major record label, the two have recorded Free & Easy on their own Chillcuts Label, which has given them the freedom and flexibility to be more adventuresome and creative.

Free & Easy is an album that pushes the envelope of enthused imaginative thought processes. Tracks such as “Trouble” and “Deep In My Soul” provide a dance feel, while a more laid back appeal occurs on tracks that include “Walk Away” and “Love Survives.” In the end, what comes together are nine tracks of nicely-crafted music. Anji and Ryan cover the gamut of pop melodies, R&B infused grooves as well as pop-oriented licks to make Free & Easy a good bet to chart on Internet radio stations, which is where much of Lovespirals’ popularity resides. Given a broader range of discovery commercially, Anji Bee and Ryan Lum are sure to not only surprise listeners, they will generate a cadre of new fans.

John Evanstan reviews Free & Easy

The Southern California duo of Ryan Lum and Anji Bee bring to mind the cool, sensual jazz of Sade on their nine-track independent CD Free and Easy. They named their record label “Chillcuts” and that’s a perfect definition of their downbeat, sultry late-night sound.

Lum plays a sedate electric guitar and gently jazzy Rhodes piano to back up Bee as she croons and seduces at the microphone. It’s a deliciously soothing combination.

Lovespirals began as an outgrowth of Lum’s former band incarnation, Love Spirals Downwards, which sold more than 50,000 copies of four albums on Projekt Records in the mid-’90s. In 1999, Lum began working with a new lead vocalist in Bee, and changed the band name to Lovespirals to reflect the new sound and direction. The result is a duo that knows how to craft seductive vocal loungey jazz with cooly shifting electronic rhythms.

Ned Raggett reviews “Free & Easy”

Windblown Kiss was a lovely way for Lovespirals to make a clear move away from the days of Love Spirals Downwards, but Free & Easy is the best evidence that the duo of Ryan Lum and Anji Bee is now distinctly its own creative team. With Lum’s guitar playing and arranging now focused on, indeed, free and easy jazz/lounge grooves, Lovespirals here are much more in the creative vein of an act like the Thievery Corporation instead of the Cocteau Twins, say, without specifically cloning either group’s sound. Bee’s singing is a perfect counterpoint, a blend of classic mid-century jazz- pop flow and a bit of ’60s cool in a French or Brazilian sense — some low-key scatting here, some warm, playful crooning there. The gently hip-shaking title track kicks things off and sets the mood all at once, and from there Lovespirals work through a total of nine songs, all of a piece but each with its own gentle joys. Lum’s interest in DJing and techno can readily be heard throughout, more overtly on songs like “Deep in My Soul,” which quickly builds into a politely propulsive dancefloor filler, and “Just Trouble” but in subtler ways as well, as listens to “Hand in Hand” confirm. But the overall tone of the album is best captured with songs like “Walk Away,” a slow and lovely late-night mood-out with some great keyboard work from Lum to go with his guitar, and “Abide,” with its sassy but gentle strut. Concluding song “Sandcastles” might actually be the strongest of the bunch, easygoing and danceable all at once, concluding with a lovely overdubbed a cappella chorus from Bee.

Matt Rowe reviews “Free & Easy”

In a time where there are many flavours and derivations of music, giving listeners a multitude of choices, and allowing for precision of preference, Lovespirals, originally birthed as Love Spirals Downward[s] some years back, has become a provider of experiences.

Lovespirals’ evolutionary path has brought it down the road from gothic shoegazer pop to hypnotically provocative jazz that is, at once, sexy, sultry, and dreamy. Their last album, the transitional Windblown Kiss, provided hints and sneak peeks into the heart of this duo and where they were headed while their latest, Free & Easy, wades deeply into the stream of where they are.

On Free and Easy, the band’s second release with Anji Bee, who possesses a voice of honey, and a natural element that adds colour and flame to songs, exploring realms of intensities in varying degrees, there are 9 songs of jazz-fusion. With original member, Ryan Lum adding stylish guitar and keyboards to permeate the silky fabric of the new album, the lover of jazz in all of its incarnations will be quite entranced.

The album’s opener, “Free & Easy”, begins by exuding an exhilarating blend of heady and dizzying sensuality. Ryan Lum’s instrumental approach is simple and effective, wisely allowing the mood of the song to carry the listener to the album’s first deliberate destination. It’s followed by the sexually tense, “Hand in Hand”, a musically soft ‘in the moment’ tune of the perfection of love. Things pick up with the dance flavoured “Deep In My Soul” carried by a funky rhythm and delivered by Anji’s ‘by now heart pulsing’ voice. The tune is reminiscent of the ’80s brand of music.

“Walk Away” resembles the past of Lovespirals more readily than the other tunes but still underlines a mournful jazz that also resembles Sade. “Habitual” is one of the stronger songs on the album and reveals a melancholy brought on by the rut of sameness. The album’s strongest track, the ‘saved the best for last’ “Sandcastles” is clearly the band’s single. It has all of the elements going for it – lyrics, atmosphere, a brilliant soundtrack, that voice – that should alert a sleepy public to the dream-dripping gorgeousness of Lovespirals.

Lovespirals already showcases all of the reasons that they should be this period’s hip duo. What remains is for you to discover why I said it.