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 Artrocker Magazine
April 2009
The Whole Sha Bang 7" review
Elizabeth Sharp (ill-ease-a-beth) has been honing her sound for a few years now. A one-woman band, she plays all the instruments herself, even live. This she achieves by playing into loops, loping around the stage to play along with herself. The gigs manage to pull off the trick of building and building into a kind of frenzy. They are not to be missed.
And the honing is evident here on her new single. Comprised of an A-side and a double-A, the two are brought together under the capsule headed 'The Whole Sha-bang!'
The first of these, 'Here Comes Trouble', showcases a new groove domination, which had been hinted at on Ill Ease's last album, 'All Systems a Go-go'.
"I don't know what I want, but I know what I like," sings Liz. Here usual themes are here: summarized as dealing with loves won and lost—quirked by Sharp's eccentric approach, which involves taking hold of a rock 'n' roll paradigm and teassing and torturing it, like a cat with a mouse.
'What Makes Your Heart Go Boom' has a fuzzy guitar and a falling-down-the-stairs loop. Why ever not, we say.
- Artrocker
Live show review:
West Hill Community Centre
Brighton England
Fall
2008
The atmosphere in this little community centre—where people are told off for standing up or talking—is so wearyingly reverent that we could be in church. Its the aggravating dogmatic downshot to Ladyfest's indie girl-empowerment—that all art here is of equal value, everything's amazing and if you're not with us you're against us. Which makes giving an honest assessment of the first-middle-aged, all-male, Goth band, who are awful, awkward.
Thank god then for Peepholes. A boy banging a drum and Katia—all frocked-up mentalism, smaking the crap out of anything that makes a noise and fixing yr ears with the best scream we've heard in ages. It's dance-your-guts-out HAPPY.
Ill Ease hates DRUUHM MACHEENS she hates DRUUHM MACHEENS! She smacks her snare like its Peaches' arse and makes summat joyous out of a (tongue-in-cheek?) indie girl Ludditism. You think: has she never heard Stephen Morris' kickdrum rise up, flare its nostrils and whinny in 'Blue Monday'? Has she never had even the beats of The Blow punch little holes in her heart? Yeah, probably, but Elizabeth Sharp looks and sounds amazing, deliriously slapping about a noisy drumkit over bass and guitar that she'd looped on the fly, minutes earlier. I think I hate drum machines too, and I love drum machines.
It totally sabotages all the usual being-in-a-band image bullshit. There's nothing but her, some noise-making things, and a machine that lets her layer the noises like a little kid who swapped friends for tape-recorders, and made up new, better mates by multitracking herself into a gang. There's no posing, it's all clatter. I wish everyone would do this—just make up A Thing and get up onstage and have a bit of a shout and stuff. I bet it feels ace.
 Everyone things Ill Ease is amazing, especially Katia Peepholes, dancing onstage like a ragdoll throughout. But sometimes, for me, it lacks the immediacy of the ace All Systems A Go-Go! album. And she opens with her weakest idea, the one about models where she sarcastically drawls, "New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Milaaaaan" and grins knowingly cos like models are bad and stuff. "I dont give a fuuuuuhk!" she drawls, like the Southern gent she is, "just gimme the druuuughs!"
Then 'The Two Party System' which you think it's about how, like, politics is bad, until the chanted outro, "We alll get fuuuuhked!" and it turns out to be be about getting fucked again.
But just when you think she's pissing about with one-note songsketches, she brings out something like 'One Hell Of A Bender'—another bloody drugs song until you actually listen to it and you find the sweetest little love story hidden away right inside of it. It's elegant little Pavement-y songs like this and the gorgeous 'Power Turns Me On!' that I wished I'd heard more of. Songs that make lying in bed all day with a pocketful of pills and a best friend in a clothes-free summer sound like the best thing ever, sung in a clatter of drums.
Like the best Ladyfest gigs, tonight proved briliantly that anyone can get up onstage and have a bit of a shout. But Ill Ease proved that there's no point in doing it if it isn't a noise clever enough to drop your pants for.
The Deli NYC
November 2008
Ill Ease wants to see you go crazy
Brooklyn-based one-woman musical sensation Ill Ease's sixth full-length, Turn it Loose!, dropped early last month. Characterized by low-fi
strumming and rhythmic drumming (not to mention a host of other musical contributions), Elizabeth Sharp's raw instrumentation and minimalist
singing is a combination sure to turn heads.
Lyrics range from irreverent to simplistic and repetitive. While the words leave a lasting impact, it's
Sharp's delivery style that astounds: on initial listen, one assumes they're grooving to an Iggy Pop- meets Rolling Stones-loving, testosteronedominated,
indie band. It's beguiling!
Sharp's skill at seamlessly layering myriad instruments and varied vocal elements is laudable, an audible
illusion if ever I heard one. Her catchy and adolescent-esque "Hate the Game" is hands-down soundtrack bound. (Think a Michael Cera
"comedrama.") Sharp nods her head to history with "Here Comes Trouble," an antidote to Orbison's original "Pretty Woman." Addictive and
danceable, this track inspires clapping and singing in no time.
Raucous and discordant, "When Suddenly, the Evil Twin Arrives!" offers a fun
number apt to be overplayed at hipster stores everywhere. With flirty lines like "Shake it, shake it, baby! I wanna see you go crazy!" it'll have
customers rocking from dressing room to register.
Seeking Southern twang? "Dear Krazy" serves up fast-paced, folksy foot tapping with a side
of frenetic chorus. But don't take my word for it; peep Ill Ease's MySpace page or visit her official site, illease.com.
Chicago Free Press
October 2008
"Turn it Loose!" (Ionik Records) is the perfect name for the new danceable disc by Ill Ease and the Racket. Ill Ease (a.k.a. Elizabeth Sharp)
wants you to feel the funk and shake some action from start to finish.
Beginning with the disco deconstruction of "Here Comes Trouble
(To The Tune of Pretty Woman)" and then spinning dizzily into "It's A Downward Spiral," Ill Ease and the Racket want nothing more
than for you to, as she whoops at the end of "Spiral," "turn it loose!" There are plenty of opportunities to do just that on "Two Lanes Left
(All The Way)," "Le Jeux Son Fait," "My Last Tango In Paris" and "I Think I Might Be In Love Again."
The Knoxville News-Sentinel
October 2008
'Sharp cuts loose in tight fashion'
Ill Ease provides darkly vague comfort on "Turn It Loose!", a brilliantly executed exercise in contrasts by
Elizabeth Sharp.
Sharp's one-woman project—which newly credits The Racket, a name for the looping pedals she uses to hold
grooves—is an unusually interesting play on atmosphere.
"Turn It Loose!" is a rather precise and complicated DIY endeavor designed to feel deceptively unstructured, a
method that might draw comparisons to Beck or M.I.A., though Sharp is more akin to Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey
and a blend of Throwing Muses founders Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly that combines Hersh's ominous
ambiguity and rhythmic crunch with Donelly's wry cheer and infectious hooks.
The result on "Turn It Loose!" is a song like "It's a Downward Spiral!" where Sharp happily sings the titular
refrain as all manner of chaos, from electric-guitar jolts to manic tambourine, drums and claps, erupts all
around. Then there's the jumble of "Two Lanes Left (All the Way)," a road song (complete with city shout-outs)
that comes across as both carefree and sinister as she sings about moving on.
Opener "Here Comes Trouble (To
the Tune of Pretty Woman)," which in fact is not to the tune of "Pretty Woman," best exemplifies Sharp's
approach as she pins her deadpanned, smoky delivery of, "I don't know what I want, but I know what I like" to a
propulsive, yet beguilingly murky, mix.
Meanwhile, whether she's entrenched in the full-roil of the crashing "Le Jeux Son Fait" or singing along to the
whimsical whistling of the peppy "I Think I Might Be in Love Again," Sharp leaves her music wide open to
interpretation. So even listeners clueless to her intent find a way to connect to her weirdness.
Prefixmag
October 2008
8.0
Percussion genius Elizabeth Sharp wrote a bunch of tunes while on the road last year. She must have had plenty of
moments where, though tired and foggy, there was the urge to shout out with gusto.
Positive, hopeful songs abound on Turn It Loose!, and Sharp's sound is by now hard as a rock: dense insistent drumming,
off-kilter lo-fi guitar, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, her persistent overdubbed barbaric yawp over her own vocals. There
is a giddy feel to the record, and it's infectious.
Songs like "It's a Downward Spiral!" "When Suddenly, The Evil Arrives!
(Brighton Beach Memoirs)" and "Hate the Game" all attest to the fact that Sharp is not happy due to being naïve. Her
lyrical take seems to be that since life is bizarre and sometimes mean, fuck it, embrace it and rise above as best you can.
The musically dark but lyrically brave "Le Jeux Son Fait" sums up that philosophy with grace and grit.
What Turn It Loose! turns loose is the spirit of a confident, savvy artist. Sharp doesn't look away from pain but dares it to
stop her.
This is a funny record that makes its point fearlessly. Its ragged production and constant pulse gives it its power.
You know you are listening to a person who says it like she means it.
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