Effi says she frequently feels like an alien and makes music in the hope that someone out there knows exactly what she means. Her grandfather sang opera in Greece; her mother inherited his voice and brought it to the U.S. along with a career in science. Effi got the voice and an obsession she can't shake — that music is both science and something beyond it, a repeating act of reaching toward beauty that we somehow keep finding and losing and finding again. A Boston-based songwriter who trained as a chemist and makes music by feel rather than by what's current, she builds art-rock that pulls from Greek rembetiko (the blues of the eastern Mediterranean) and its vocal traditions, from Zeppelin and classic soul, without much interest in whether any of that is what you're supposed to be doing right now. She treats each song as its own discrete problem to solve, and none of them end up sounding alike.
For Effi, a song either catches you with its melody or earns you with its soul — everything else is negotiable. Groove is non-negotiable. Music satisfies something that words alone can't reach — that's what books and poetry are for. Produced by Effi, Patrick Hanlin, and Anthony J. Resta amd Paul Kolderie, with drums and vocals tracked with Joel Edinberg at Q Division and quartet sessions cut with Will Holland at Chillhouse in Boston — mixed by Paul Kolderie and mastered by Jeff Peerless — her upcoming releases carry that philosophy through — big guitars, real groove, and melodies built around what her voice actually does. Pink Floyd is in there if you listen for it. So is Zeppelin.
“I feel like an alien and I keep wanting to shake people into seeing what I see — or find the ones who already do.”