Ingenium [The Milwaukee School of Engineering's entertainment weekly]
10 December 1998
excerpt

"'Bare Wire,' who's that? You can call them a new age group. And rightly so--they have a very unheard of style of music. This new style encompasses the whole CD...I've never heard anything like it before. The lead vocals have a tone that is very similar to the vocals of The Cranberries. The music and the lyrics bear no such similarities...When I listen to this CD I picture hippies doing some interesting psychedelic drugs and saying, 'whoa man, this is really deep stuff.'"

"Like a journey to a distant galaxy, Bare Wire is an entity in itself. As distant as a project could be, you find a powerfully soulful singer accompanied by new age elevator music. At first listen, the oddness may be intriguing as the band's originality gives it a unique personality..."

"Bare Wire brings mellow, unique mood to new CD

"The haunting voice of Simone Grey fills your ears as the 'Delicatessen' album opens. It surrounds you, entangles you and makes you just want to sit back, relax and become one with the music.

"She harmonizes with other voices as she sings the lyrics, 'I know I said I'm fine but I lied...' over and over again to her first song, 'Verisimilitude.'

"After previewing the CD and photos that I received with it, I really did not know what to think except for the fact that there was a picture of a woman with her lips sewn shut. The last thing I expected to hear was a woman singing simple lyrics with mellow music.

"Contrary to my expectations, Grey creates such a unique sound with her voice and other voices at the same time that you feel helpless to the music taking place. Grey is a talentd singer and knows how to play with her voice and the music that accompanies her.

"Each song is extremely short...You long for Grey to continue on through the night to put you to sleep. However, the CD ends abruptly and leaves you wanting to hear more. I find this a downfall of the CD. There are 15 songs on the album, yet it takes just over half an hour to finish the album when a normal album runs about 60-70 minutes or more.

"If you are looking for an album to help you relax or mellow out after a day's worth of classes, Bare Wire's CD titled 'Delicatessen' is the one for you."

"The music is minimal; keyboards barely hint at a melody, and synthetic bass oozes beneath. There's no percussion, no rhythm. No need; songs come and go as thought fragments, some lasting maybe three minutes, others forty seconds. The lyrics are shards of agony. The voice of a girl wails in and out of melody, echoed and shifted in the mix, going up and down scales as pain determines. This is a suicide diary; maybe it started as the relic of a bad divorce, but it's become so much more. There are moments of beauty here unlike anything I've heard in a long time. I was reminded of later Swans, of Portishead only without the beats or the forward mobility. There is no forward mobility to this music, only the stasis of torture. This is a short disc; fifteen songs in thirty minutes. But it remains utterly captivating, which is something that can't be said for many of the seventy minute opuses emerging lately. These are the hellish thoughts that wash over all of us at one time or another. If you haven't felt this bad recently, don't worry, at some point you will. By the way, you will probably not find this any records store. The address is included; write to this girl. Get this CD. Unconditional recommendation."

"The saving grace of Delicatessen is Grey's voice, which lilts across the bass and synths in patterns so erotic one could get lost in their sultry curves. On tracks such as 'No Auto Focus' and 'Strong Winds,' Grey evokes sounds reminiscent of The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan, and elsewhere shades of Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and even Björk emerge in Grey's sensual vocals. Bare Wire's free-form unbroken flow of music sounds as if the plaintive sexuality of Grey's caged songbird voice is scored by Brian Eno."

"Once in a while, something beautiful comes along that changes the way we look at the world. Bare Wire's 'Delicatessen' is one of those things.

"Bare Wire is the name of a project by Simone Grey, who wrote, performed and produced the entire album. She has a haunting, ethereal voice similar to that of Tori Amos, but without Amos' jagged edge of anger and turbulence.

"But 'Delicatessen' isn't emotionally barren; barrenness is the antithesis of this album. 'Delicatessen' is packed with explosive lyrics delving into the relationship of relationships and emotions themselves.

"But the delivery of the lyrics is what makes Grey's project unique and enthralling. Solo vocal tracks become woven with multiple other vocal tracks, often with a soft, slow and deep bass beat pulsing like a heart at the center of the track. The best thing about this album is the hidden track, a wonderful five-minute track of gentle electronica that crests and dips in luxurious waves.

The hidden track is a surprise biscuit at the bottom of the basket, but it's so good that the absence of similar pieces throughout the album becomes a shame."

"Bare Wire (aka Simone Grey) is something of any anomaly. She's got the rage of Alanis or Tori, a voice better than Jewel, her feelings get through better than the lot of them and she only uses a few notes droning in the background. Her voice flutters in and out of some dark topics, and she really bares her soul. The lyrics of the album seem like they were taken directly from Grey's diary, thus making the music all the easier to relate to. The music she sings over is ethereal and spacey, which only serves as a more stark reminder of Grey's vocal power. This album is excellent as just that - a whole piece. It's difficult to take one song out - the whole thing is more powerful as a collection. I'm just glad that I'm not the man who this anger is directed..."

-- Mike Richwalsky