Ali Marcus Is the Most Autobiographical Songwriter

There's nothing particularly different about Ali Marcus' new CD Miles and Miles and Miles, other than the fact that she's clearly done the songwriter thing for a while. The songwriter thing, of course, involves driving miles and miles and miles, singing your songs in tiny little nowhere towns, playing for tips, sleeping in tepees when the opportunity arises, etc.

Recorded by Bubba Jones (sounds like a made-up name to us), Miles and Miles and Miles is all about road songs. The first one is called "The Most Autobiographical Song," and we're really glad she called it that. It's the kind of artful song title that helps save the song from sounding sort of "Hey, look at me and all I've experienced."

In fact, Marcus is pretty loquacious, particularly on her socio-political songs, like "Titanic." Luckily, though, as we already said, she's been doing this enough to know how to be loquacious without making people wish she'd stop using so many words. On this song, the pleonastic, melodically devoid versus give way to wide-open, memorable, sing-alongable choruses.

Obviously inspired by any number of women singer/songwriters, Marcus sounds enough unlike all of them to be described as unique, but enough like them to slide easily into the CD collections of those ladies' fans. Hopefully, the miles and miles that she's driven to come to the release of this CD will pay off for her. Clearly she's earned more recognition than she already has, and Miles and Miles is full of well-written lyrics over chunky, well-strummed guitar chords. Download some songs and see for yourself.

The CD release party happened last Thursday at Conor Byrne, but that doesn't mean you missed out. She'll be at the EMP May 3, and at the Northwest Folklife Festival on Sunday, May 27.

For any Tacomans living vicariously by reading Seattlest, you can check Marcus out at Java Jive on April 21.