R.I.P. Odetta.

One of the most important voices in American history has died.

People often use the phrase 'voice of an angel' to descirbe whatever twee white woman is deploying some tasteful melisma over strings and dispassionate tunefulness.

I call bullshit.

There are several voices that I feel manage to encompass the breadth of divinity and still express what mortality means to us as human beings- Diamanda Galas, certainly. Antony Hegarty, pretty much. But there is no one who ever put the expanse of the human experience into song like Odetta James.

The kind of interview we just don't get enough of.

An interview with Diamanda Galas from Out magazine. Wow.

Shivers of love and death, the sound of other worlds; and always, the voice.

New Diamanda Galas. Available now.

Do not pass go; you need this in your lives. Having her sing both "Down So Low" and "Heaven Have Mercy" promises something truly soul-shattering, and I dig on it. The former is one of the two or three greatest songs ever, a declaration of soulful pain that can make time dilate and stop in its laser-like focus, while the latter was Piaf at her most fatalistic (those who saw La Mome/La Vie en Rose may recall it is the opening sequence of that film). For those alone, I'm psyched, and you should be too.