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Confessions of a Folk Music fan 49 of 49 Ciao Users found the following review helpful
Rating from Merv 5 Stars ()

Advantages Beautiful voice, incredible harmonies, every song tells a story

Disadvantages None

Having pretty wide musical tastes, I enjoy all sorts of music from rock and jazz to country, but I’ve always had a passion for folk music and used to be a regular visitor to the local folk clubs in our area before we had kids and stopped going out for about 15 years.

At this stage I'd like to make it clear that I don't sport a tangled beard, own badly fitting Aran sweaters, wear sandals with socks or break-out in unaccompanied song when I'm in my local.

Nevertheless, I like all sorts of folk music, traditional and modern, Irish and Scottish, with perhaps a preference for American and in particular singer songwriters such as Paul Simon, John Prine and Leonard Cohen.

One of the best of my recent CD acquisitions is a cd by singer/songwriter Kate Rusby who I believe has an abundance of talent and is capable of making the folk genre more popular than its been for a long while.

Kate Rusby was born and raised in Yorkshire, and whilst I’ve not yet seen her perform I’ve heard an interview with her on the radio and read a couple of articles about her in the Sunday supplements, and she comes across as a real character. She’s a Barnsley girl and very, very proud of it. She still lives there, maintains that she’ll never leave, and has a broad and rich Yorkshire accent in which she sings everything, including scottish and irish ballads.

Kate is the daughter of two well known folk singers in their own right. They had a ceilidh band, in which she apparently played fiddle by the age of five or twelve depending upon which reviews you read and went on to study drama at barnsley college where, with a childhood friend, Kathryn Roberts she formed a band called Equation, appeared at the Holmfirth festival and made an album which gained a fair amount of critical praise and was voted folk album of the year.

Kate was also part of the all-female folk band the Poozies (made a great album in 1998 called ‘Infinite Blue’) and narrowly missed fame and fortune by failing an audition for ‘Emmerdale’. Still their loss is our gain.

Since then she has pursued a very successful solo career displaying her distinctive writing and a very special storytelling talent on ‘Songs that were Bedtime Stories’ which she followed with the even more successful ‘Hourglass’.

Her next album ‘Sleepless’ was brilliant, instrumentally sparse, but that made it even more absorbing with echoes of Maddy Prior, Judith Tabor and the late Sandy Denny.

‘Little Lights’ is breathtakingly beautiful from start to finish. Its title, was supposedly inspired by coming home one dark night and only seeing her cat's eyes reflecting some dim light. Dominated by Kate’s incredibly warm soprano voice and backed by very subtle instrumentation it evokes tremendous atmosphere and emotion when you listen to it. Every song tells a story, the lyrics often filled with sadness.

The album opens with ‘Playing of Ball’, which features traditional lyrics set to music by the singer herself. The story is a violent one of a girl who falls in love with a young man, but her father does not approve, and kills the boyfriend.

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Detailed Rating

Originality
Quality and consistency of tracks
Cover / Inlay Design and Content
Lyrics Sublime
How does it compare to the artist's other releases Good
How does it rate alongside the competition Outstanding

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Merv

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Previous page Next page Page 1 of 10 | 1 - 5 out of 49 comments
  • dragonfly63 22/06/2006 16:22
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • 123me 28/01/2005 21:33
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • Bollinger28 18/11/2004 23:30
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • l1nda 15/11/2004 11:25
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful

    not my tastes but a great review. Lin x

  • salem_witch 27/02/2004 17:40
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful

    Not my kind of music!

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