Acoustic folk full of sophistication and style.
Katie Spencer, from Humberside, has released a delightful third album full of melody and guitar-picking. Some might refer to this as a headphones record, and it’s also one to curl up beside a fireplace and listen to, savouring its musicality and melancholy.
The title track opens the album, with some liquid guitar and pedal steel underscoring Spencer’s vocals, which recall those of Aimee Mann and Norah Jones. ‘Come Back and Find Me’, which is packed with jazzy chords and includes the simile “like a moth to a flame, you’re mine”, was the first track to preview the album, and it contains a lovely clarinet solo from Giacomo Smith. Producer Matt Ingram, who has worked with Spencer’s fellow folkies The Staves and Laura Marling, adds sensitive and understated drum parts full of syncopation.
‘Home’ is about how absence from a loved one makes the heart grow fonder, while ‘Goodbye’ mourns the end of such a relationship: “I loved you like the tide, unrelenting with the sway”. Equally melancholy is ‘Forget Me Not’, which mentions “the fallow fields of memory” and “the steps of fragility”. ‘Carry It All’, which closes the album on an optimistic note, again looks to nature for inspiration, comparing love to “mountain thyme” and the weathering of the earth. Spencer hangs on to each line, her vibrato answered by lines of clarinet.
‘Stranger’ (“I hold my shadow in the light”) is a gentle tune that makes the listener focus on her complaints of a “heartbreaking traitor”. ‘It Was Then That I Knew Love’ is a simple yet mysterious song with a folky melody and four verses which all end with “it existed beyond blood”, suggesting that it is not just family members that provide a person with love.
‘Back to the Brightness Above’ is a marvellous instrumental that replaces any lyrical content with flowing passages of acoustic guitar. ‘Cold Stone’ is also mostly instrumental, here with pedal steel, more clarinet and high notes on the guitar that combine to form a musical representation of “warm life” or “a golden light” which feature in the lyrics.
These ten excellent compositions are worth a listen, as they exhibit the work of an artist who crafts fine melodies and arrangements.
