Savannah Stopover preview #3: Class Actress

This is the third in occasional posts previewing acts slated for the Savannah Stopover festival March 9-12, 2011. The detailed schedule has not yet been released, but Class Actress appears booked to perform in Savannah on Thursday, March 10, with the band MillionYoung. Check out previous posts about Astronautalis and Little Tybee.

I prefer music that, no matter what the genre, reaches out and grabs me by the throat. Maybe hard, maybe not so hard.

Class Actress doesn’t do that, but it’s hard not to be impressed by the melodies, by the easy beauty of lead singer Elizabeth Harper’s voice, and by the emotional appeal of the songs. In an interview in New York magazine from February 2010, the Brooklyn-based Harper noted: “I really feel it’s time for pop music to have some romance in it that’s not forced or a jingle.”

There’s been a great deal of buzz about Class Actress, with hundreds of thousands of listens on MySpace and serious critical acclaim. Will Class Actress ultimately deliver on all that promise?

Here’s “Let Me Take You Out”:

And “Journal of Ardency”:

And “Adolescent Heart,” which I imagine almost everyone can relate to:

And here’s a video of “Careful What You Say,” live at SXSW, outdoors — with a highway in the background, and a very excited but distracting fan in the foreground:

More about Class Actress can be found on the band’s Myspace page or Tumblr page.