It is far from rock crit hyperbole to say that violinist/accordionist/guitarist Amanda Kapousouz has played every conceivable style of music in her memorable career. After a relatively lucrative busking career in New York City yielded tons of offers to play traditional Irish music, Kapousouz branched out and accepted gigs backing groups playing everything from metal to Dixieland jazz to bluegrass; she even composed modern dance scores and arranged film music. Shades of all of that and more flicker forcefully in Kapousouz’s recorded translation of her musical resume under her nom du plume, Tin Cup Prophette. With her first full length of original music, Liar and the Thief, Kapousouz swirls the indie angst of Cat Power, the folk profundity of Suzanne Vega and the eerie epic alt.pop claustrophobia of Nash the Slash into a singular sonic presentation, transforming her darkly beautiful songs into flowing frames of cinematic delicacy and urgency. It might come as a surprise that there is no film to accompany Kapousouz’s sonorous soundtrack but rest assured that the gifted singer/songwriter has provided more than enough musical grist on Liar and the Thief for any listener’s imaginational mill to create their own mind movie.
--Brian Baker
