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Drawing heavy influence from Tom Waits, Los Angeles hipster Eleni Mandell initiated a recording career with art-cool albums packed with her gritty, noir-ish sketches. Mandell, who was a huge fan of L.A. punkers X growing up, was raised in the Sherman Oaks region of the San Fernando Valley, and began performing out during her years as a student at Berkeley. Soon after, she fell under the mentorship of Chuck E. Weiss, the Tom Waits hobnobber (and subject of Rickie Lee Jones' "Chuck E's in Love"). In 1998, she self-financed her first release, Wishbone. The album spurred the Waits comparisons as well as comparisons to P.J. Harvey. Her next two albums, Thrill and Snakebite, continued the mode of torchy cool, but 2003's Country for True Lovers saw a shift in Mandell's muse to classic-country tunes. Inspired by such trad-country classics as Tammy Wynette's Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad (1967), Mandell enlisted producer and former X guitarist Tony Gilkyson, whom she had met through Weiss. The effort, recorded in a mere two weeks with a host of L.A.'s top country-rock sessioneers (including former Lone Justice drummer Don Heffington), featured a mix of originals and covers by artists such as Merle Haggard.
from Wikipedia:
Eleni Mandell (born October 1969, Los Angeles, California) is an American singer-songwriter. She currently publishes albums through Zedtone in Toronto, Ontario. She is also a member of folk super group, The Living Sisters, with Inara George and Becky Stark.
Press
Around 2001, The New Yorker magazine described Mandell "as perhaps the best unsigned artist in the business." In the same year, Mandell won the Los Angeles regional poll at the first Independent Music Awards for "Pauline".
