Meg Baird, Scout Niblett and more for Kath Bloom tribute

Avant-folk legend honoured

2008 was a busy year for Kath Bloom. Not only did she release the massively accomplished Terror, her first official album of all-new material in 24 years, but she also saw two of her most seminal recordings with avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors – 1982′s Sing The Children Over and 1983′s Sand In My Shoe – get a very welcome reissue through Chapter Music. With psych-folk led revivals from Vashti Bunyan and the sadly much less alive Judee Sill and Karen Dalton sparking a huge interest in the musical canons of these ‘lost’ maidens, you shouldn’t bet against a similar wave of reappraisal for the wonderful Ms Bloom following the release of Loving Takes This Course in April.

Part tribute album, part retrospective, the main draw will be the first disc of covers including contributions from the likes of Devendra Banhart (of course!), Josephine Foster (“I consider myself her biggest fan”), Espers’ Meg Baird, Mia Doi Todd, Scout Niblett, Hush Records artist Corrina Repp, Bill Callahan, The Dirty Three’s Mick Turner (with Peggy Frew), and, er, The Concretes. Bit of an anomaly that last one. We’ll be interested to hear it. Sun Kil Moon frontman Mark Kozelek contributes his version of ‘Finally’, previously on his (mostly) covers album The Finally LP last year, at which time he had this to say about Bloom: “I’ve never enjoyed sharing a bill with anyone as much as I have with Kath. She’s wonderful and lights up the room wherever she goes”. The second disc collects together Kath’s corresponding originals, most resplendently mournful. Once again, Chapter Music will be doing the honours of putting this out.

Loving Takes This Course
01 Marble Sounds, ‘Come Here’
02 Bill Callahan, ‘The Breeze/My Baby Cries’
03 Laura Jean, ‘When I See You’
04 Mark Kozelek, ‘Finally’
05 Mick Turner & Peggy Frew, ‘Window’
06 Devendra Banhart, ‘Forget About Him’
07 Scout Niblett, ‘I Wanna Love’
08 The Dodos, ‘Biggest Light Of All’
09 Josephine Foster, ‘Look At Me’
10 Mia Doi Todd, ‘Ready Or Not’
11 Corrina Repp, ‘Fall Again’
12 Marianne Dissard & Joey Burns, ‘It’s So Hard To Come Home’
13 Amy Rude, ‘In Your School’
14 Tom Hanford, ‘If This Journey’
15 Meg Baird, ‘There Was A Boy’
16 The Concretes, ‘Come Here’

Alan Pedder

 

‘Come Here’ [as seen in Richard Linklater's 'Before Sunrise']

Tagged amy rude, bill callahan, corrina repp, devendra banhart, kath bloom, loren mazzacane connors, marianne dissard, mark kozelek, meg baird, mia doi todd, peggy frew, scout niblett, the concretes