Thea Gilmore
Strange Communion •••
Fruitcake / Fullfill
Is absolutely nothing sacred? As each year passes it feels increasingly as though there is nobody out there who is totally immune from making a Christmas album. But while we inwardly quake at the thought of what mind-blowing aberrations 2010 might bring (Björk’s Baubles? Deck The Halls With PJ Harvey?), we must first digest this year’s two most unpredictable entries, which just happen to lend themselves to obvious comparison. Having long been touted as a British female Dylan, it’s a particularly wry twist of fate that Thea Gilmore releases her version of a festive album within a few weeks of her songwriting icon’s first seasonal foray, Christmas In The Heart. But while the majority of Dylan’s attempt comes across as a somewhat gauche and overly sentimental throwback to a bygone era, much of Gilmore’s sounds a lot like, well, pretty much anything from her last two albums.
Marissa Nadler had a nasty interruption to her current American tour with Alela Diane on Friday when the car in which she and her band were travelling was hit by a driver who ran a red light in Birmingham, Alabama. Although Marissa’s car was written off, no one was seriously hurt and the tour continues.
In her native Canada, singer-songwriter Sarah Slean is an award-winning star whose last album charted in the Top 10 and who regularly performs in respectably large venues to adoring fans. Over the course of her six studio albums and over a decade of shows, she’s developed a reputation as a spellbinding, intelligent performer with a talent to be reckoned with. Never heard of her? The fact that she has never toured Europe once in all that time might have something to do with that. She’s visited, briefly, with a couple of concerts in Paris many years ago, but as far as Wears The Trousers is aware, she has never once played a gig in the UK.
Caitlin Rose
‘Still Feelin’ Blue’ [Gram Parsons cover]
These days, the appellation of “up and coming Nashville singer-songwriter” is more likely to send a shiver of fear up people’s spines than it is to provoke excited expectations of a new Loretta Lynn or Patsy Cline, but Caitlin Rose is one young lady worth paying attention to. Her 2008 EP Dead Flowers was a gutsy romp through generations of country music of the coarser, more genuine type than we usually hear in artists barely into their twenties, marking her out as a straight-talking, no-nonsense star with a bright future. A year later and she’s just been picked up by the good people at Names Records, home of Alela Diane, so expect that future to get increasingly interesting very soon. In honour of what would have been his 63rd birthday, Caitlin is offering up her cover of the Gram Parsons classic ‘Still Feelin’ Blue’, the lead track from his 1973 solo debut GP, as a free download. Compared with previously released efforts by the likes of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Australian country darling Kasey Chambers, Caitlin’s version is rawer and rougher and all the better for it. Caitlin is making a rare trip to play some shows in the UK this December, starting with a visit to our friends at The Allotment (at the Betsey Trotwood) on December 1. MP3 after the jump.
Heather Greene
‘Moon Hangs Fire’
Much has been made of Heather Greene’s other role as a US Ambassador for whiskey giants Glenfiddich, making her one of the world’s only female Scotch whiskey experts, but her music is far removed from the usual cliché of a gravel-voiced soak tearing up a saloon bar with all the delicacy of a Texas tornado. Her latest album Sweet Otherwise follows on from where 2005’s Five Dollar Dress left off, building on that album’s palette of sounds, occasionally venturing into poppier material and utilising subtle electronica, but never really abandoning the moody, smooth and mellow ambience she is so good at. ‘Moon Hangs Fire’ is an unshowy, sophisticated piano ballad with a country lilt and judicious use of glockenspiel. The opening line “I have to admit / I like heartache” is expertly sighed out as if she’d been instructed by Lori Carson, setting the scene for the remaining, contemplative four minutes. Indeed, the whole song could be an extract from Carson’s 2001 album House In The Weeds, but that’s no bad thing at all. Few people can do lonesome lullabies quite as well, but Heather Greene is up there with the best. Gorgeous. MP3 after the jump.
As an ex-Mormon former childminder for Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Jesca Hoop can claim to have one of the most unusual backgrounds in contemporary music. And, as her second album Hunting My Dress so beautifully attests, she can also claim to have one of the most striking voices in the same field. Released on November 30, it’s her first full-length release in the UK and looks set to capitalise on the wave of buzz she’s still riding on the back of last November’s well received Kismet Acoustic EP and some jaw-dropping live shows.
Having inked a new deal with Rykodisc, country singer Allison Moorer will release her seventh album Crows on February 9th, her first collection of original material since 2006’s Getting Somewhere. Perhaps influenced by the research involved in making her 2008 covers album Mockingbird, for which she recorded several covers of songs written by women (Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith and June Carter Cash to name but a few), Crows finds Allison departing from her usual country stylings with more emphasis on sophisticated pop arrangements, many of which were written and performed on piano. She’s also made a conscious effort to inject a greater poeticism into her lyrics.
Lovable Swedish sister act First Aid Kit have announced full details of their much anticipated debut album, The Big Black & The Blue. Released through Wichita Recordings on January 25th, the album includes recent single ‘Hard Believer’ and its B-side ‘Waltz For Richard’ along with nine brand new songs. Johanna and Klara will spend the end of November and beginning of December on tour across Europe with Port O’Brien, but will make a very special visit to London on December 7th for an intimate show at The Old Queen’s Head, Islington, where they will play the album it its entirety. Additional shows will be announced for January to support the release.
Having lately become much more vocal in her support of women who suffer in violent relationships, Mary J Blige has taken things to the next level by teaming up with Frida Giannini, Creative Director at Gucci, and several New York-based organisations to open a new women’s refuge in Yonkers, NY. The new centre is the latest development in her campaigning for better service provision to victims of domestic abuse and follows the establishment of her Foundation For The Advancement Of Women Now last year. Speaking to CNN about new venture, she said: “All age ranges will be able to come to this centre. Women from all walks of life, not just women from poverty-stricken areas. Whatever it is, they’ll be able to come here. There are gonna be psychologists here, doctors here, day care centres here. Anything that you need or they need to be able to better themselves is here for them.”
Filed under: feature, voice on the verge | Tags: alan pedder, interview, mary epworth
voice on the verge #41: mary epworth & the jubilee band
One of the difficult things about constantly listening to and writing about new music is keeping an open mind and finding the time to give everyone the chance to impress you. Not necessarily artists who arrive fully formed, they’re much easier to spot, but those with something more subtly unique to bring to the table…it breaks our hearts to overlook those, no matter how meandering their approach might seem. So it’s with a mouthful of humble (pumpkin) pie that we belatedly turn our attentions to East Anglia native Mary Epworth and her Jubilee Band. Perhaps it was just that the promotional photo which came with her 2008 debut single ‘The Saddle Song’ looked so much like a Joanna Newsom ripoff – seated, elfin-faced woman wearing a vintage dress gazing into the middle distance in faintly grand surroundings with a (auto)harp at her feet – that it totally wrong-footed us and the song, a concise, prog-folk/Pagan march stomper, didn’t quite live up to such a comparison. But then few songs do, so go figure.
Anyway, let me be almost the last to tell you that the follow-up, ‘Black Doe’, is much, much better. Since its release back in August, the single has found Mary being championed by the likes of Cerys Matthews (on her BBC 6Music radio show) and The Sunday Times, while her performances and ambition have impressed enough to secure her Arts Council funding to record her debut album, the process of which starts in 3 weeks’ time. If the songs are as good as ‘Black Doe’, we could be looking at one of the highlights of 2010. This self-confessed ’60s/’70s music obsessive has turned our heads at last, so allow us to atone for the delay with an insightful little interview, courtesy of our trusty questionnaire.
