ERROR: Press

The Hipster Factor: The
Christina Finelli Recoverv
Project
By Amanda Udoff
Published; Friday" December 9, 2005

I admit defeat: There are too many interesting bands out there for one person to ever have any hope of listening to them all.. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can tell you about my latest discovery, The Christina Finelli Recovery Project, whom I discovered only due to the disorganization of Record and Tape Traders.
The solo project of one Minneapolis-based Jonny Dirge, The Christina Finelli Recovery Project is instinctively thrown into the pseudo-folk singer-songwriter category. With his yelping vocals and dynamic guitar, the comparisons to early Bright Eyes or an angrier Iron and Wine come to mind.
Recorded by himself to an Otari 8-track in a Vermont mental hospital over a period of two days, the debut album Solitary tells the true story of a pair of lovers in the nineteen seventies who were forbidden to contact each other. Let's just call them R & J, shall we? Well, in an effort to be together for eternity, they made a suicide pact that
involved jumping off the bridge spanning the Queechee Gorge. At the last moment, R decides not to jump and watches as J plummets to her death. R is now in a Vermont psychiatric hospital, unable to deal with the loss of his love.
The record is currently available in the Baltimore area at Record
and Tape Traders, but I recommend picking up a copy and keeping an eye out for The Christina Finelli Recovery Project to roll through town. This is one artist that I look forward to seeing more from.