Love Defies Definition

Thu., April 4, 1996

By Joe Ehrbar joee@spokesman.com

Judging from the exotic folk-based sounds of Laura Love, you’d figure the Seattle-based musician has spent most of her young life traveling the world, collecting melodies along the way.

Well, she hasn’t.

Love, who plays The Met on Saturday, just happens to be well-versed in the international language of music.

“I haven’t been around the world, and I haven’t studied,” Love, 34, said in a phone interview this week.

Perhaps she acquired the African, Caribbean, Appalachian and Celtic punctuated rhythms through osmosis.

“Yeah,” agreed the bassist-guitarist-vocalist. “I think bits of it just kind of leaped in from wherever I’m at, even just (TV) channel surfing, you know.”

Few folk performers, let alone musicians in general, rise above the conventions of their respective genre. Love takes contemporary folk to a new plateau, brilliantly dressing it with styles one wouldn’t normally pair together. In doing this, she’s discovered, if by accident, what most artists spend their careers doing: her very own sound.

Indeed, the Northwest music community is lucky to have her.

Love records music for both her own independent label, Octoroon Biography, and Putumayo, which doubles as a chain of ethnic clothing stores and a record label. The artist’s latest album on Octoroon is 1994’s “Helvetica Bold.” Last year, Putumayo released “The Laura Love Collection,” a CD compiling songs from Love’s first three albums.

In 1994, Love contributed a song to the Putumayo compilation called “Shelter, the Best of Contemporary Singer-Songwriters,” a benefit album for the National Coalition for the Homeless. On the double disc, Love shared the company with such luminaries as Mary-Chapin Carpenter, John Gorka, Shawn Colvin and Nanci Griffith.

Also that same year, Billboard magazine named Love one of the top 10 unsigned artists in the country.

In the near future, Love and her band - percussionist Linda Severt and guitarist Rod Cook - will venture back into the studio to record her fifth album.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Laura Love plays The Met on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $11 in advance, $13 at the door. She also plays Sandpoint’s Panida Theater Friday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10.

This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Laura Love plays The Met on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $11 in advance, $13 at the door. She also plays Sandpoint’s Panida Theater Friday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10.

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