Established Yorkshire songstress reinforces her reputation for excellence with fine mini-album.
Any new single release ahead of a new album is always a teaser. After the video premiere of her new single The Losing Hand on this site back in November of last year, Elaine Palmer aficionados will have been licking their lips at the album to come. The track was a rocky, raunchy, guitar-driven beauty of a song, featuring Palmer’s signature gritty vocal and Telecaster sound. Ahead of the track, Palmer lavished praise upon producer Mike Butler, whose searing guitar solo was the perfect complement and features heavily on the new album.
So, with the release now of the album Some Seek Silver, Some Seek Gold, was that track an indicator of what was to come? Well, mid-paced opening track Some Seek Silver hints at an answer in the affirmative. The song mixes that earthy Palmer vocal with some memorable guitar licks and kicks the album off in fine style. But anyone familiar with Palmer’s work over the years will know that she is equally as adept at using that voice to wring every emotion from a quieter, more pared-back song, and that she can switch adroitly between the two styles.
Roses and Once Were Lovers play back-to-back here and are masterpieces of their kind. With minimal accompaniment, Palmer delivers gorgeously moving vocal performances on both tracks. The latter in particular evokes the windswept North York Moors of Palmer’s homeland, a world away from the San Diego hills where the album was completed. This blend of sounds and influences, her English heritage combining with the influences mined from frequent visits to the US, is writ large on all of Palmer’s work and is reinforced quickly here. For every Once Were Lovers, there is a The Losing Hand. It is a thrilling combination.
I Still Feel The Same is the paciest song on the album. Rattling along at a fair old lick, it is a fine slice of alt-country and probably the most radio-friendly track here. Commercial appeal aside, nominating a highlighter on an album full of variety and excellence is a challenge and a highly subjective task, but Telling Of The Bees, an achingly melancholy reflection of a long-ago lost love, drips with emotion and longing and strives, ever so hard, for that accolade.
Safe to say, the only disappointment to be found here is that Some Seek Silver, Some Seek Gold is a mini-album of just seven tracks. If it leaves the listener frustrated and hankering for more, then perhaps that old maxim of quality being more important than quantity is reinforced here.
Elaine Palmer plays the Americana 25 festival hosted by Americana UK in Liverpool on November 28th – tickets are available from this link
