Olivia Rose Muzzy

Awkwardness For The Beauty Of It

Jul 4, 2009

tell your friends…

Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry

Olivia Rose Muzzy is the girl that you meet your freshman year of college, having long ago reached the point where all of the high school-aged kids you were exposed to in your hometown were uninteresting and just all kinds of blasé. They were the people you still hung around with because you'd always done so and never really considered making a monumental shift in posse. They were the friends you were stuck with and they were the people you didn't care to hang out with on weekends that you were stuck with. It was a city you'd grown exhausted with so you moved away from home, into the dormitory, and into a sea of odd characters who were nothing remotely like your old friends and neighbors. So you arrive there on campus, in a town that perpetually bears a faint cologne smell of spilled beer and throw up, and there are all kinds of alternatives to the folks that you were used to. Rose Muzzy would be one of the free spirited people you'd meet, not know what to make of her initially and then quickly see her as the girl who's interesting when the shit's being shot and when there's a real hankering for getting out there and trying something new. She'd be up for either - staying in or going out and painting the town a messy shade of red and doing it without rhyme, with a hysterical splattering of the paint upon brick and concrete, getting it all over everything. Rose Muzzy makes music that reflects a personality like the one described above, so scattered and perplexing, unpredictably weird, that it's exactly why one keeps on listening - through the difficult terrain and the bumpy ditches, knowing that she's planning to wrapped it all up somehow. It will get to a point where we can step back, look at it without the crossed eyes that it caused and see this mutt of a song that is darling in its own little way. Her music represents the very delicate balance between difficult to understand and what makes anyone feel as if they've been completely immersed in something that they don't know if they'll ever be able to make heads nor tails of. It's got the gristle in it and it's got the stringed flower petals in it as well. It floats and it rubs and it gets you feeling kooky, like you want to walk away, but feel that your feet won't move thanks to the hypnotics going around. It's a dramatic blend of oddity and classicism, the kind that is the result of eclectic tastes and an embracing of awkwardness for the beauty of it.

Olivia Rose Muzzy MySpace Page

tell your friends…

1. first song

   Welcome to Daytrotter

   
2. second song

   Oceans/Field Dance

   

   - unreleased"Ocean" was inspired by missing the sea in a place completely landlocked.  It ties to field dance through a simple line, which then to me feels just like a mountain to sing over.  We don't have many mountains in Minnesota either, so I guess this song is about dreaming we had some (and maybe what I'd do if they were there).

3. third song

   Broken Kingdom

   

   - unreleased"Broken Kingdom" was written just after I had read a book on Scandinavian Folk Tales.  I couldn't incorporate the plots but I had all the imagery and sounds of the music floating around in my head.  This is what happened, trying to capture the ethnic and folksy feel I had just read.

4. fourth song

   Climb

   

   - unreleasedThis song is inspired by riding huge hills on your bike.  A big build up and quick descent, both exhilarating but challenging to manage in their own way.  This was written in the summer, the thickest humid weather, when I was biking everyday to class.

5. fifth song

   All I've Ever Known

   

   - unreleasedI can write a lot of different things for this song. It has gone through some changes.  I wrote it at school in Iowa, in the white practice rooms where everyone else was playing Bach.  I wrote it for a friend who gave me some encouragement.  I wrote it while the river water was rising.  But in the end, the song comes down to my relationship with music and how it has always been present in my life.