Highly impressive country/folk noir EP opening with a stone-cold killer.
Here for our consideration is an EP from British-Chilean polymath Naomi Larsson, aka Naomi In Blue. Only four tracks, but that’s often enough to make a solid impression. There’s no physical release for this, so you’ll have to fire up your chosen streaming/download/struggling artist defrauding site to hear or buy Naomi’s work.
Opening track ‘Colour Of Blue’ is a classy, kitsch melodrama. Portishead goes spaghetti western country. Slow and menacing with warped, wobbly piano and twangy minor chords suspended over a funereal waltz. As excellent a first track as this reviewer has heard in quite some time. ‘Drunk Again’ is mournful and pain-soaked, all that you’d expect from a song so titled. A lovely pedal steel swoops high and lonesome as Larsson’s misery turns to anger and back again. A beautiful example of contemporary-retro country music at its best. ‘Homeless Man’ is more folksy-country, and literal to its title. No more than a finger-picked acoustic guitar and a twenty-first century tale of destitution.
‘Bottom of My Glass’ is a little more ethereal, with distant snare rolls punctuating the echoes of guitar and vocal. Larsson returns to the joys and/or evils of drink to round matters off. This is a truly excellent E.P. If Naomi In Blue were able to produce an album of equally high quality, it would be a rare treat.
