Oakland’s Rachel Efron delivers
stunning new jazz-pop piano album

Jim Harrington, Mercury News • October 13, 2020

Rachel Efron is back with a new stunning album, “Human As I Came.”

The Oakland singer-songwriter-pianist sounds absolutely terrific throughout the 11-track offering. The album catches your attention from the get-go, opening with two stand-out racks — “I Changed My Mind, I Want You” and “Your Money Costs Too Much” — which also happen to be the first two singles off “Human As I Came.”

Efron’s technique, like always, is topnotch as she marries piano pop and jazz styles on a record that is at times easy like Sunday morning and at other times strikingly emotional and raw.

The feel of the record probably has a lot to do with the space Efron was in — emotionally, mentally and physically — as she wrote material for the album. Having been diagnosed with late-stage neurological Lyme Disease in 2012, Efron stopped performing and focused on getting healthy. Her therapy included herbs and medicinal foods, but also just taking time to watch the sunsets and rest.

But she never stopped writing during that period, eventually ending up with enough new material for a new record.

“Even on my worst days, creatively, musically I was healthy,” she says. “Music was a way I could continue to experience myself as completely well. More than almost anything else in my life, it was a light that guided my way through.

“Now that I’m so much healthier, I have even more access to that side of myself. I am taking more creative risks than ever before. It’s a feeling of both a wide open canvas in front of me, and a deep clarity of what is mine to make.”

EARLY PRAISE FOR “HUMAN AS I CAME”

“Efron’s technique, like always, is top notch as she marries piano pop and jazz styles on a record that is at times easy like Sunday morning and at other times strikingly emotional and raw.“
— Jim Harrington, The Mercury News

“Grooving, affectionate, and expansive. You’ll love it if you enjoy jazz… For creatives, by creatives, with no slack in the story.”
— Kelsey Marlett, Two Story Melody

“Brilliant songwriting, illuminated by an exquisite, expressive voice, makes Rachel Efron's latest album a must-hear experience. This is marvelously melodic alternative pop with jazz and classical colors adding to a captivating palette. Efron's material gracefully glides from sensitive to sensual to searing.”
— Paul Freeman, Pop Culture Classics

“With a jazz foundation, the album is moody and introspective, tinged with longing, adventure and tenderness. The first single is the album-opening “I Changed My Mind, I Want You,” a sultry tune oozing with the mystery of horns and Efron’s shimmering vocals. “Your Money Costs Too Much” swirls in slow spirals with angsty desire and the lines: “Train me on your cruelty/Hit with the absence of your touch/More air for you when I enter the room/Your loving costs too much.”
— Aimsel Ponti, Portland Press Herald

“Human As I Came drawn on jazz, folk, and pop influences to create just the right balance of the elements. Ms. Efron’s songs are articulate lyrically but relatable”
— George Graham, WVIA-FM

“A beautifully recorded album with finely crafted, adventurous songwriting… On board are an impressive list of players… Props to everyone who worked on this album – exceptional!”
— Adam Theis, Jazz Mafia

“These eleven songs showcase Rachel’s stellar songwriting; and her sweet vocals and passionate piano playing.”
— A.J. Wachtel, Music Journalist

ARTIST BIO

The first lyrics that Rachel Efron lettered onto the wall of her childhood bedroom in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, were from Paul Simon’s, “Still Crazy After All These Years.” It was a small transgression, but as it turned out, the first step down an ever-increasingly slippery slope. All of her favorite songs found a place. From the Beatles: “Here comes the sun, little darling.” From Van Morrison: “Call me up in dreamland / Radio to me, man.” And soon, any new verse or chorus she so much as noticed went quickly to press: “I almost ran over an angel,” Tori Amos told her; “Did I disappoint you / Leave a bad taste in your mouth,” U2 asked her. The writing was on the wall, so to speak, but it had occurred to no one, least of all Rachel, herself, that she’d undertake to write some of her own lyrics someday.

That day ended up being ten years later, during her senior year at Harvard University. She was deep in the world of academia, writing a thesis in Social Anthropology about her recent fieldwork in Nicaragua. But even amidst the essays and ethnographies, she was very clearly stalking the arts… Her Anthropology focus was “poetics;” basically, in lieu of making art, Rachel was studying culture as a piece of art. Meanwhile, she honed her writing ability with poetry and creative nonfiction classes, as well as her musicality, studying classical piano, performing in various jazz ensembles, and taking both traditional music theory courses at Harvard and jazz piano lessons with a professor at Berklee College of Music. Finally, it occurred to her to introduce her two loves of words and music, and her first song was born. It felt like opening a present, and as odd and misshapen as the little thing was, she was enchanted. She persevered, writing a dozen more songs, and by the end of the year she was putting on concerts in the common rooms of dorms that drew hundreds of people.  

As graduation approached and her classmates planned for careers in law or medicine or finance, Rachel at last gave herself permission to make art the centerpiece of her life. She challenged herself personally and artistically with a move across the country to California’s Bay Area, whose varied music scene has served as her creative cocoon and catalyst for growth ever since. She has recorded three full-length albums and one EP, worked with the best musicians in the Bay Area and New England, played such premier listening rooms as Freight and Salvage (Berkeley), Yoshi’s (Oakland), The Independent (San Francisco), Club Passim (Cambridge), The Living Room (NYC), and Tin Angel (Philadelphia), opened for Sara Bareilles, Vienna Teng, Jill Sobule, and Spencer Day, and has had her music played on radio stations across the United States and Europe, time and again establishing herself as a singer/songwriter with that most precious quality of a unique artistic voice.

For her most recent project, a full length album to be released in 2020, Rachel teamed up with one of her best music friends, producer Jon Evans (Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan). Over three years, and on two coasts, they created lush, haunted, rhythmic, and direct sound spaces for each its twelve songs. Featuring Jon on bass, alongside drummer Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), and trumpet player / horn arranger Erik Jekabson (Electric Squeezebox Orchestra), it is alternately mischievous, irreverent, and poignant, but always pointed in the direction of unflinching if poetic honesty. Standouts include singles, “I Changed My Mind, I Want You,” and “Your Money Costs Too Much,” as well as the delightfully saucy, “Little Bit Of Bad,” the can’t-look-away disturbing “Demeter’s Dream” and “Last Goodbye (Persephone’s Dream)”, and the loving and languid, “Hold Me In The Dark.”

PRAISE FOR THE MUSIC OF RACHEL EFRON