Clare Fader - The Elephants Baby (2000)

Her debut cd, The Elephant's Baby, is considered by some to be the jewel in the crown of independent record making.
"[The Elephant's Baby] is indescribably witty, urbane, slick and all around unique. Fader has the proverbial way with words and her imagination is a frightfully bizarre living room full of animal noises, weird lovers, threatening furniture, strange childhood stories, and the occasional romantic holiday. It's all played out as cabaret (she calls her ensemble The Vaudevillains), part New York 1999 and part Berlin 1927.
It's a cabaret act that has gone off its meds. It allows for nursery stories with masochistic leanings, simple love songs that catch you off guard, and a subtle sexuality and blatant carnality that are disarmingly sweet and slyly dark...
Arranger and conductor Damon Camona has assembled an orchestra of strings, woodwinds, percussion, reeds and brass that harkens back to the Carl Stalling ensembles of Looney Tunes fame. He has them spinning like tops, turning on a dime and a whim...It bubbles, growls, pops, and snaps, evoking merriment and foreboding in equal measure, lush to a fault, edgy to distraction...
Fader and Carmona seem to have fed each other's strange sensibilities to produce one of the more unique American Recordings I have heard in recent years."