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Heather Duby - Piano and Vocals
Erin Tate - drums (Minus the Bear)
Bo Gilliland - bass (Severna Park, Western State Hurricanes)
Anil Seth - cello
Steve Fisk - additional keys, Producer (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pigeonhed, Cinerama, Low and more)
Rob Hampton - guitars
Alex Rose - guitars
Heather Duby is back with her 3rd full-length release, Heather Duby. Heather, a Portland singer-songwriter, moved to Seattle in 1994, and after several years of fronting her own band, released the Sub Pop LP Post to Wire. Come Across the River (2003) was Heather's first record on Sonic Boom and received rave reviews. Heather Duby was once again co-produced by Steve Fisk, and features Erin Tate (Minus the Bear) on drums.
Impact Press - Mackenzie Pause
I liked this within one minute of the first song. Melodic hypnotizing female vocals joined by a steady droning piano and cello. Her vocals and even the music could be compared to Mazzy Star. Her lower register gives a dark feel to the vocal melodies with beautiful accompaniment of piano, strings, acoustic guitar and trumpet. "Providence" picks up the pace a little and her vocals sound more like Dido here. Even with comparisons made, Duby has discovered her own sound and originality musically and lyrically.
The Stranger - Kathleen Wilson
Since her 1999 release Post to Wire, Seattle-based singer Heather Duby has been compared to the triphop coolness of Beth Orton and the ethereal goth queen Siouxie Sioux. Her deft mix of electronic beats and icy-cool vocals are unrivaled in these parts, as no one else quite manages to blend the two elements as effortlessly and flawlessly. Duby's third and latest album, Come Across the River, has been released on Sonic Boom Recordings and showcases the singer coming into her own with a dark collection of songs that portray more emotion than her past efforts. Duby rivals Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval with her heady-yet-melting vocals as a wallowy guitar accompaniment flows thickly beneath tambourine tinkle. Chimerical and intense, Come Across the River is a fine album that finds Duby, once again, standing unrivaled.
Splendidzine - Steve English
Thank heaven for rebel girls. Few would have faulted Heather Duby for taking the road well-traveled by many of her post-Lilith Fair sisters and recording another set of gentle electro-pop for post-millennial dinner parties like her solo debut, 1999's Post to Wire. Perhaps sensing that one Dido is one too many, the Seattle-based singer/songwriter has gone the other way, peeling the plastic shrinkwrap off of her songs and trading in that peach JC Penney turtleneck for a battered, second-hand raincoat. Smart move, considering that Come Across the River's overcast ambience is as icy as Pacific Northwest rain in November. Duby's music has visited the dark side before, but the murky tones of her second solo offering find her picking out a shady lot and building herself a little black bungalow there. Loss, absence and resignation are the recurring themes here, while piano, live drums and cello replace Post to Wire's breaks and beats, lending an appreciable gloom to the proceedings. Her husky voice still hangs in the air like your breath on a cool day, and it's even more compelling now that it isn't competing with so many electronic bells and whistles. If art does indeed imitate life, it sounds like Duby spent the time between albums pulling herself out of one romantic car wreck after another. Darkness seems to have become her muse in the years since her debut, and although it probably wasn't much fun to experience, it has affected her songwriting and arranging skills positively. Tales of broken relationships and absent lovers dominate ...River's narratives -- in "The Big Dwindle", she literally cleans the emotional baggage out of the closet. Picture a plain-talking Tori Amos mentally vivisecting an affair gone bad while systematically devouring a glass of wine and a pack of Marlboro Lights and you're halfway there. You may come for the downcast songs and melancholic arrangements, but you'll stay for Duby's otherworldly murmur of a voice. Much more understated here than on her earlier material, she keeps her voice to herself and barely raises it above a whisper, as if she's worried that someone in the next room might overhear. Fragile, vulnerable and powerfully feminine without ever sounding girly, its timbre hints at a deeper power that could topple buildings if sufficiently provoked. By no means a miserable mope-rock wrist-slasher, Come Across the River is dark, rainy pop done very well. The clouds break every once in a while to let in a shaft of sunshine, but the album's best songs come from the cold, damp shadows. Duby's indie-pop is so chilly you'll want to grab a sweater. -- Steve English
All Music Guide - MacKenzie Wilson
Seattle songbird Heather Duby has surely found her voice this time, with Come Across the River. Following up 1999's Post to Wire and 2001's electronic album Elemental, Duby dispels the uncertainty and preconceptions of those two records with a breathless kind of confidence as she approaches 30. The saying that the third time's a charm proves true here; she and producer Steve Fisk work with a template of electronic samples, pianos, and strings for an organic arrangement. The simplistic approach accentuates Duby's ethereal vocal style all the more, making Come Across the River her most daring set of songs. From the childlike loveliness of "Golden Syrup," to the vaudevillian "The Rare Vavoom," Duby's concentration on each individual song reflects her own personal and professional growth. Emotion is loaded, however Duby's not exclusively concerned with only feeling. A literary impression, whether it be romantic or humanistic or both, "Make Me Insomnia" and "Providence" are solid indications that Duby has truly found her place. Come Across the River metaphorically supports Heather Duby's rise beyond idealized expectations not only of critics, but of herself. She's made one of the finest albums of her career.
Ben Guerechit/Seattle Sound Magazine
Heather Duby's previous solo releases have elicited much comment about "pop sensibility". But pop sensibility is for the like of American Idols, and Duby may congratulate herself for remaining un-pop-sensible on her self-titled third full-length, which plays like the culmination of the efforts of her first and second records. Production genius Steve Fisk steps in once again to help Duby firmly grasp the organic sounds of Come Across the River, while adding a dusting of electronic notions suggested on Post to Wire. Most of these songs revolve around the helplessness of love, as if, at times, Duby can't help but fall in love ("Still Rough", "Wrestle and Cuss"). Basic piano chords and melodic violin lines bring both beauty and sorrow to "Gone Aground" and Erin Tate (Minus the Bear) drums up the building blocks for the optimistic sound that guides the best songs on the album ("Listen" , "Would Have Liked You (I'm Pretty Sure)"). The Finale, "Places Shape Lives", steps into the realm of recent Stereolab and early U2. If that isn't enough, the record includes a little bonus song in which Duby prepares for the battlefield of love. At last, Heather Duby has found her sound.
Philadelphia Weekly
In between the fall of Nirvana and the rise of Death Cab for Cutie, scads of super-talented Seattle acts made great music but failed to break through nationally. Many quit, but thankfully singer/songwriter Heather Duby didn't, and she's only gotten better in the seven years since her sparkling 1999 debut Post to Wire. Back then she operated in the mold of Tracy Thorn or Beth Orton, draping her resonant voice and pensive lyrics over electronic textures. But on her terrific self-titled third album Duby's piano-heavy arrangements are more organic, and her vocals are grittier and more confident. There's a gothic tinge in her work, though it's more Bronte than Siouxsie, and her touring ensemble- which includes members of Seattle math-rockers Minus the Bear- brings added rhythmic coplexity live. (Michael Alan Goldberg)
