Kara Mosher - Dosage

With her debut CD, Dosage, mid-Michigan native and current Austin, Texas resident Kara Mosher establishes herself as a voice to be reckoned with in modern electronic music.

One of the special properties of music is its ability to transport you to a particular time and place.  An often undervalued response to original music is that it has a familiar feel, like you have heard it somewhere before.  When understood as an emotional response, rather than an intellectual analysis of the technical aspects of a song’s construct, the listener is often saying that it evokes emotions reminiscent of certain times, places and experiences.

Mosher’s work reaches out toward a number of touchstones.  Fans of the Lilith Fair era, with artists like Sara McLachlan, or female-fronted 1990’s “modern rock” outfits like the Sundays or the Cranberries will find a lot to like here.  Modern chanteuses like Fiona Apple and Regina Spekor also shine through as influences on a consistent and polished set of songs.

On eleven track Dosage, keyboardist, singer and songwriter establishes a very introspective mood.  Her keyboards parts are airy, providing an ethereal pallet on which to layer her soulful and serene vocal tracks.

The songs deal with many issues, both personal and public.  Songs like Survive, Senseless and Set Free explore a collectivist vision, where we all come together and find common understanding of the problems that seem to needlessly separate us.

Others are about relationships, such as Moon and Sea, which deals with distance from the ones you love, Wake Up Call, where you might find you are about to lose someone dear to you, or You And Me Live Forever, which was inspired by the death of her grandfather.

True to the album's name, a few of the songs also deal with pharmacology – no surprise for a disc that will have broad appeal to fans of “chill music.”  For instance, Golden Path deals with an awakening during a mushroom trip.  The tune DMT is an ode to the popular party drug.  Dosage takes a different tack down this path, as it explores the process of dealing with balancing the cocktail of drug options for someone dealing with bi-polar disorder.

Coming off a successful pair of showcases at this year’s SXSW Festival in Austin, Mosher’s tracks have been picked up by public radio stations on both coasts.  All in all, Dosage is a fantastic freshman effort and Mosher is an artist who bears watching as her career continues to grow.

You can find Kara Mosher on Facebook and order or download Dosage at https://karamosher.bandcamp.com/releases.