Abracadabra!

photograph by Shannon McIntyre

Comparisons are often a useful tool for clueing people in to the style and sound of a new or relatively unknown artist. In fact, sometimes musical resemblances are so strong and the comparison so readily apparent that people can't help making the obvious connection. It's this type of sonic familiarity that's either blessing or cursing Austin's Abra Moore. If you've heard her before, you've probably thought it, and if you're hearing her for the first time, you're probably thinking it: Edie Brickell.

This comparison occurred with almost universal frequency two years ago when Moore released her debut Sing, and if anything, it will probably happen even more when her major label follow-up, Strangest Places, hits stores next week. One almost hates to broach the subject.

"It's a total compliment," says Moore. "She's got a beautiful voice. The first time I heard her I went, `Wow, we both sound similar.' We both come from soul backgrounds..." Breaking off in mid-thought, however, it becomes obvious Moore is internally polarized in dealing with the inevitable. Acknowledge or omit? Both. "It'd be great not to bring Edie Brickell into this, but I'm totally flattered. Let's not go there."

Let's not go there then. Instead, let's talk about how she got to a place where these comparisons are being made at all. The journey begins in Hawaii a decade back when Moore, an original member of Poi Dog Pondering, hit the road. "We decided to go traveling and came to Austin, and just fell in love with it," explains Moore.

Simple enough. The look of resignation on Moore's face as she tries to give a more in-depth description says what she cannot: It was that ineffable quality that many others have failed to articulate yet definitely experienced which led the "Poi-lings" (as she calls them) to be instantly at home in this little central Texas haven.

While her tenure with Poi Dog ended after the group's self-titled debut for Columbia in 1989, brief stints in San Francisco, New York, and Europe didn't stop Moore from continually gravitating back to Austin, which became her semi-permanent home base almost by default. It was here, then, that Moore recorded Sing for Bohemia Beat, a small, Denver-based indie that's also home to Jimmy LaFave. Released in July of 1995, Sing received a small avalanche of fanfare, and when Arista Records decided to branch out past its locally based Arista Latin offshoot, Arista Austin's first signing became Moore. That brings us to Strangest Places.

Musically, there are noticeable differences between Sing and Strangest Places. The former's dynamic was gentle, with a picturesque quality that converted fans instantly. Surprisingly, the new album doesn't revisit that type of delicacy; one could say that Sing was predominantly coddle while Strangest Places is more crash.

"Things were more quiet on the first record," explains Moore, adding that the differences were "natural" rather than intentional. "It's just where I was." That would be Paris, actually, according to Moore, who took a little jaunt to France's capital and wound up singing on the streets to support herself. When she returned to Austin, "I got a four-track thing going, and just stripped it down."

And what exactly is a "natural" difference?

"When you compare Sing and Strangest Places, it's like, `What happened?,'" begins Moore. "Nothing happened. Sing was recorded and what got captured is the way it was recorded. Even the way I play the songs live, it was a little different. I didn't wake up one morning and decide, `I'm gonna be a rock chick.' [Strangest Places] is much more aggressive. It's just where I am now. And I'll be curious to know what my next record will be like."

Okay, so wondering about the next album is getting a little ahead of things, yet it's clear that having a major label deal has afforded Moore some luxury -- a little security. "It's freedom," confesses Moore. "I'm able to get my music to a wider group of people and that's what feels really great. But there's more to it than just being on a major label."

By "more to it" she intends that everything extraneous to her role and the role of the musicians is subordinate to those same two roles. There are purely practical, material advantages to jumping aboard a major label, but those aspects are of negligible, big-picture importance. For Moore, the process is an intrinsically worthwhile end in and of itself. "Sure, it makes it even easier," she says. "You know, I can get a car that runs. And get the music out there. But if I drop off tomorrow, I'll always do it. I'll always write a song. So I feel very satisfied -- no matter what happens with it."

Given the fast start of Strangest Places, it's a safe bet that Moore won't "drop off tomorrow." If anything, she's just begun to catch on, as evidenced by the planets aligning well in advance of the album getting in stores. Moore has not only landed on radio, she's done so nationally, and with relatively little work on behalf of Arista Austin.

The first single, "Four Leaf Clover," was picked up right off the bat by stations in Boston and Atlanta, and shortly thereafter was added to KROQ in Los Angeles and WXRK in New York --the two biggest beacons that almost every other commercial alternative station in the country look toward in determining which songs to add to rotation.

As a result of this immediate interest, Arista Austin has been in the unusual position of having radio stations call and ask, "Who is this person?" Standard operating procedure dictates that labels spend copious amounts of time just trying to get program directors to listen to a new artist. Stations don't call labels.

photograph by Shannon McIntyre

It's almost unfairly serendipitous. Even the single itself was a well-timed gift. While Moore had been carrying around some of the songs that ended up on Strangest Places for as long as five years, "Four Leaf Clover" happened after she and her band had begun recording. As she confesses, "It just kind of fell into my lap."

This, it turns out, extends well beyond one song -- it's the cornerstone of Moore's whole career. "I never made a major conscious decision, `I'm going to be a musician,'" she says. "I think it's something I just kept doing. In college, I was going to be an interpreter, but I took ear training and I took theory and I studied. I was always keeping that. It's something I had to do. I couldn't not do it.... Music is something that's chosen me. It's therapy for me. Some people, you know, build houses to do it. Some people write poetry. I sang it out. I wrote it out and sang it out."

It would be simply wrong to think that Moore is the cosmic beneficiary of some kind of inverse Karmic relationship between effort and reward, that good things just happen to her, or that her therapy pays her instead of costing her. In fact, the increasingly demanding schedule looks like it's starting to wear on Moore.

Lately, she's been flying back and forth between Austin and New York on an almost weekly basis. She's also just completed a video shoot in L.A, and rather than earning herself a much-needed rest, her few days at home are filled with rehearsal to fill out the touring band. Then she's slated to do some radio listener appreciation shows in Tampa and Hartford, as well as a flood relief show in Minneapolis.

After that, Moore's influential friends will help her not-so-fledging-but-rapidly-accelerating career. Sarah McLachlan has been a fan of Moore's since Sing, and since the Canadian songstress is also the Perry Farrell of this summer's all-female Lillith tour, Moore will have the opportunity to perform before crowds of up to 20,000. She's already picked up Lillith dates in Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Washington, D.C., playing with neophyte stars like Joan Osborne and Jewel, as well as stalwarts like Emmylou Harris.

And that's not all. At the end of this month, Moore goes in front of the camera to play a small part in the next Richard Linklater movie, The Newton Boys. Those in the know -- or those with a penchant for the trivial and ultra-obscure -- might recall that this is actually the second Moore-Linklater collaboration. No, that was Julie Delpy, not Moore, who starred opposite Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise. Moore had 12 words worth of potential celluloid stardom in Slacker.

The scene: Frank Orall, singer, and of course Moore's bandmate from Poi Dog, hits up Moore for some change so he can get a newspaper. She responds with the biting, "You've got a strong back, get a job" -- her remaining words being the sardonic end of the exchange, "Change, I've got change."

It's not exactly the lead in Evita, but, generally aren't we far better served when actors and actresses act and musicians make music? If you're in doubt, pull out that old Don Johnson album, or if you're not a masochist, pick up Strangest Places. Those who've done so at this point have either added its first single to their radio station's rotation, or booked her for dates on the femme musical tour.

It's all happening for Moore and it's happening in a potentially big way. Of all the people anointed by this town to go forth and represent Austin on the national stage, it's the frail-looking girl who sat quietly in the corner while the others got ink and idolization that might actually end up in the spotlight. Not bad for someone who wrote what looks to be a hit single without even trying -- a song that many kids here in Austin are already singing probably without knowing it was written by a local artist.

Is she surprised?

"That's a weird question because if you ask, `Am I surprised?' and I say, `Oh no,' that means I'm cocky. It's not that `I'm badass' and `I knew this was going to happen.' I'm surprised because they might say, `Here comes another chick singer,' and when you think about it and they never say, `Here's comes another dude.... But it's weird that, yeah, it could be little old me. I just like the fact that it's all happening so quietly. That's my personality -- subtle."