Recommend me: Weird-Voiced Female Singers

Thought this might need its own thread after some discussion on the Pitchfork Peoples List thread. I often find myself drawn to singers with unusual voices - Tom Waits, Neil Young etc. But other than a handful of examples (Bjork, Joanna Newsom who are both GREAT) I would like to hear more women who exhibit weird/unusual vocal styles.

So far some suggestions from Ilxors on the other thread:

patty walters
yma sumac
judy henske
joan labarbara
catherine ribeiro
un Togawa
Dagmar Krause
Nina Hagen
Yoko Ono
Björk
Lhasa de Sela
Mrs Miller
Tanya Tagaq
Macy Gray
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Meredith Monk

recent Marianne Faithful, at least based on that Metallica song

Linda Sharrock
Elizabeth Fraser
Jarboe
Diamanda Galas

What do you think of MTV Teen Mom Farrah Abraham's first single?

first name should be patty waters btw, no 'l'

Josephine Foster

there is totally a thread for this.

and its a good thread too.

Fiona Apple can hit some interesting registers on some of her songs. I'm particularly thinking of moments on "To Your Love" which sound almost frightening.

Oh yeah and of course The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson

I'm fairly sure there already has been a similar thread, but these ladies all deserve some more love (or should that be hipster kisses?). And how could I have forgotten Diamanda Galas? Jeez, that should be the first name on any such list.

Victoria Williams, at least on Happy Come Home
Phew was weird voiced wasn't she? Or do I have the artist name wrong there? Just know that the same singer cut 2 lps with very different line-ups under the name Phew.

Liz Fraser or is that more what she sang with it than the weirdness of the voice itself?

Nico too obvious?

Phew isn't that weird a singer, I don't think. Her stuff is great, though.

This thread has some suggestions:

classically trained female singers who sing weird songs

Kristin Hersh

soz for the patty misspell

also:
junko
blossom dearie
lene lovich

Also this:

if I like Diamanda Galas/Patty Waters/Fatima Miranda/Meredith Monk...

Buffy Ste. Marie has a fairly unique delivery.

Groups I enjoy featuring distinctive/weird female vocals:

Melt Banana
Zap Mama
Cocteau Twins
Zeek Sheck

I still can't quite enjoy Dagmar Krause. Her voice tends to fit the music though.

that's the one! the if i like diamanda/patty/etc one. read thru that thread definitely.

Judee Sill

Kathleen Yearwood

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Yeah, dunno why i didn't immediately think Buffy. Especially against the electronics of Illuminations.

Thinking of which can add Anette Peacock.

Jana Hunter. The singer/guitarist of Lower Dens.

Louise Rhodes of Lamb doesn't have a "weird" voice per se, but she sometimes does odd stuff with it

Planningtorock

Sa Dingding

Shiina Ringo solo, some of the time. Also some of the time with Tokyo Jihen: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v15379232YqTQjRCC?h1=Tokyo+Jihen+%28Just+Can%27t+Help+It%29+~+Yukiguni+

Most of the major female singers in Arabic music might fit, e.g.: Oum Kalthoum, Asmahan, Faiza (aka Fayza) Ahmad, Warda, Naget, Shadia (getting a bit less "major"), etc. Perhaps not so much Fairouz for what you are looking for.

For that matter, lots of foreign singers are probably going to sound weird. But I get the feeling that's not what you are looking for.

Intense and stylistically varied, but not necessarily all that weird: Genevieve Schatz of Company of Thieves.

Actually, I get the sense people are pushing into more experimental territory than you really want, but maybe not.

x-post:

For Dagmar Krause, try the first album of Brecht/Weil/Eisler songs she put out, Supply & Demand.

Apologies for checking off all my usual obsessions, but what do you expect really?

For Dagmar Krause, try the first album of Brecht/Weil/Eisler songs she put out, Supply & Demand.

Yes!!! I love her pretty much unconditionally, but this is what she does best.

Leila Mourad, Betty Davis, Serafina Steer

ha now I'm reaching because I want to say Santigold

Nora Dean!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKYr-pQ4htE

Tank battles was also pretty tasty. Dagmar wise anyway.

Trying to think if Sylvia moore is actually a weird singer or if its just the context created by her posh vox against african instrumentation.

Also Emmanuelle Parenin is the voice weird or just the music sublime?

Would think Gal Costa would fit though

itt DJP attempts to make "weird" into a synonym for "distinctive"

Our goals are similar.

I already started a thread like this and also it is my birthday!
Ha! Hold on, lemme find it...

classically trained female singers who sing weird songs

But it's kinda different, I guess.

Anyway Josephine Foster

lots of good stuff that you may be looking for in ^^ that thread but carry on if you must

i think the "classically trained" part was a red herring anyway

Did Karen Dalton get onto the list yet?

Or Pinkie Maclure? certainly her early stuff showed that, haven't heard her stuff with John Loop.

Regina Spektor? She can get a bit old sometimes but when the urge strikes, she's fantastic (try: Pavlov's Daughter)

<3 Yoko so much

Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings
Molly Siegel of Ponytail

xp and on a completely different tip.. Wanda Jackson? Fujiyama Mama and others?

Dorothy Moscovitz and Nancy Blossom.
Grace slick

Leila Mourad, Betty Davis, Serafina Steer

― Melissa W, Thursday, August 23, 2012

I was thinking of coming back and adding Leila Mourad! Shocked to see her name pop up.

Nice! I really love her.

La Lupe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kRIV23LQyI

Yes, she was a self-parody, but great nevertheless and she could kill (in a good sense!) a straight bolero without camping it up.

Yolanda Rivera, mostly known for her work with La Sonora Poncena. I still find her vocal timbre a bit weird at times, but in most cases I've grown to enjoy her songs. Also a decent timabelero, incidentally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvvUngEjcHA

looooove la lupe

Also happy birthday La Lechera!

Smack Dab?

Yes!!!!!!!!

God bless you! I've been trying to remember that for years.

That is some classic Joan La Barbara. I misread that as "redundant gypsy" even though I already know the title.

xp Haha, no problem! I was going to mention her (Linda Hagood) earlier, but she could be a bit much.

Mimi Goese was one I thought of earlier
then Kristen Hersh came on my walkman too.

Anita Lane might fit toojust being reminded by the C&TCS thread

Hey. It's Jun Togawa!

Soap & Skin is phoney baloney. Yecch.

sidsel endresen - seek her albums with humcrush & helge stein which are bizarre smoky abstract vocalese - usually (on other albums) she's working a more conservative beth gibbons/ diana krall thing but she weirds it up a treat when she wants to.
also if you don't know les rita mitsouko you need to check them for catherine ringer's spine tinglingly screechy punk-chansonrie. i'd recommend "bestov" & "marc & robert" . padma talwalkar - best hindustani khyal singer i ever heard. tujiko noriko i find not much like björk at all, despite comparisons. thankfully she doesn't work predictable scale-runs, etta james wookie belches or b52s rip offs into her vocal style, which is considerably more breathless & minimalist. tsehaytu beraki worth checking - eritrean krarist & singer. some groove - sounds like black sabbath to me but then my brain is corrupted.
XP:mimi goese's singing on hugo largo's "mettle" album particularly but also her "soak" album under her own name. sainkho namchylak - tuvan throat singer who ventures successfully into free improv outer space.
stina nordenstam gets some stick for doing cutesy ickle high voiced squeak-singing jazz-pop early in her career, but became the utmostest deadpan noir-dramatist with her "dynamite" album, "morning belongs to the night", "the birds sing for their lives" and a buncha other stuff.

A lot of these suggestions are just weak singers who sing English with bad accents. Living in Europe long enough has cured me of any fascination I once had for such.

Mrs. Miller is something else though. I think she's brilliant!!

Pretty much all of the female vocalists mentioned on this thread will seem weird to western ears (sometimes SWM ones):

Carnatic Music Recommendations?

Ayelet rose Gottlieb

Oh yeah and of course The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson

Weird how there's so many Swedish female singers who seem to downright imitate her now, like the singer form Zeigeist, Malin Dahlström from Niki & The Dove, and Karen Park especially.

Anybody mentioned Grimes and Lizzi Bougatsos from Gang Gang Dance yet?

Karen Dalton. Gorgeous.

Ayelet rose Gottlieb

who I had mentioned on one of the threads I linked to, not that it's not worth repeating. She's not always that weird though really.

Lisa Gerrard has one of the most impressive and unusual voices. Hard to believe sometimes that it's all from the same person.

Charlotte Marionneau from La Volume Courbe

Marie Daulne from Zap Mama

Melissa Arpin-Duimstra does a nice hissing gas shoegaze coo with lovesliescrushing who out-cocteau the cocteaus by sounding more like thomas köner goes pop. really can't listen to liz fraser these days - often sings flat - embarrassing lyrics & cheap ethno-forgeries, honestly think alison goldfrapp is a better vocal technician. also julee cruise - want to hear her doing shoegaze? pluramon's "dreams top rock" & the one after deserve attention.

The point at which "weird-voiced female singers" or even "distinctive female singers" (because, honestly, what on earth is weird about Kristin Hersch's voice? Or Charlotte Marionneau's?) becomes just "recognisable female singers, let us list them."

Anyway, if we're just doing distinct, I'd like to add Alison Shaw of Cranes.

i don't really understand what is meant by weird so will go along with distinctive instead just so i can recommend romica puceanu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGYYtxJqFak

also idjah hadidjah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJDd49R6ZIU

what on earth is weird about Kristin Hersch's voice?

To be honest I have no use for Throwing Muses beyond House Tornado so maybe I have a different impression of them to everyone else, but certainly Hersh used her voice in a very idiosyncratic way on some of those early tracks. Thinking of the epiglottal garglings on Call Me, the way she jumps all over the scales on those staccato bits of America (She Can't Say No) and generally the way she would switch into different modes of singing within the same song, something very Monk-like about that.

Anna-Lisa Ingemansson

Huh. I guess that Hersch's voice is so familiar to me that I've stopped even thinking of it as strange in any way, but I guess I see your point.

not sure if annisette's voice is weird enough for this thread but i love her anyway. she sounds like a more tuneful yoko to me sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYX7ZdPOCpg

I wholeheartedly second Judee Sill, although I've always found her voice to be beautiful in its plainness. Wouldn't call it "weird" in itself really, but certainly atypical from the flourish we're accustomed to hearing from female vocalists.

I'd add: Kath Bloom, both members of CocoRosie, and I'm gonna go ahead and throw Antony Hegarty on this list.

I was thinking of adding Little Jimmy Scott cos he does sound androgynous enough to be a female singer.

& finding it very odd that Kristen Hersh's vocals on the Throwing Muses track I was listening to yesterday might not be viewed as odd. Certainly not the straightest sounding thing i could think of .

Might actually find Shirley Collins's voice odd in its lack of affectedness though.

Well, I dunno. This thread is really just hammering home the concept that there is such a much narrower range for what is considered a "normal" female voice. Or maybe people have higher expectations of "perfection" or accomplishment from a female singer in a way that male singers are expected to have quirks or idiosyncrasies which would be unacceptable in a woman?

Wondered that about the two that I posted (I don't think either are 'weird sounding' - and their 'distinctiveness' is perhaps contingent on how familiar you are with music from those places in those genres)

caveat: I'm not all that big on quirks or idiosyncrasies in vocalists

Well, the OP said he liked unusual male voices but wasn't well informed on unusual female voices. I think this thread is just a response to that request for information, really.

xp

Anne Briggs

sidsel endresen - seek her albums with humcrush & helge stein which are bizarre smoky abstract vocalese - usually (on other albums) she's working a more conservative beth gibbons/ diana krall thing but she weirds it up a treat when she wants to.

Just came here to post about the new Sidsel Endresen and Stian Westerhus album, Didymoi Dreams. Definitely on the vocalese/extended technique side of things, but still very human and inviting. It's on Spotify.

also if you don't know les rita mitsouko you need to check them for catherine ringer's spine tinglingly screechy punk-chansonrie. i'd recommend "bestov" & "marc & robert" .

Never really thought of Catherine Ringer in this connection, most of the time she's not far from a typical post-punk singer (would you say David Byrne is a weird-voiced male singer?). But then with a song like Le Petit Train I see where you're coming from.

recent Marianne Faithful, at least based on that Metallica song

Marianne Faithfull has released seven albums and collaborated with Daniel Lanois, Jon Brion, Hal Willner, Blur and Damon Albarn separately, Beck, Billy Corgan, Etienne Daho, Pulp and Jarvis Cocker (repeatedly) separately, Nick Cave (repeatedly) and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds separately, PJ Harvey, Cat Power, the McGarrigle sisters, Keith Richards, Antony, Rufus, Teddy Thompson and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra since that "recent" Metallica song.

This thread is really just hammering home the concept that there is such a much narrower range for what is considered a "normal" female voice.

This is a request-for-recommendations thread, not a thinly conceiled manifesto.

Yma Sumac OWNS

rebecca black

Yoko kinda maybe owns this thread. First Plastic Ono Band album is basically "What if the Beatles survived into the 70s and made a krautrock album?"

Scout Niblett, maybe?

Minnie Riperton
Melanie Safka
Mae Questel

Yolandi Visser

Catherine Jauniaux from Aksak Maboul (her solo record from the early 80s is great)
Anna Nacher from Atman/Magic Carpathians

fell like posting some Ewa Demarczyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2RusSu-IY

goosebumps. this performance is amazing beyond words.

Robin Holcomb

Shelley Hirsch

urszula dudziak
flora purim

her voice isn't weird so much as it is a powerful deep bellow
one to watch for sure
https://circuitdesyeux.bandcamp.com/