Album Review: Katie Spencer - What Love Is

 

www.katiespencer.net

The music career of Katie Spencer is set to get its biggest boost yet with the release of her latest album. WHAT LOVE IS encompasses all the attributes making this Yorkshire-based artist an articulate purveyor of intricately crafted softly spun guitar music. The major development is the platform afforded starting with a high quality studio and production team coupled with a promotional presence befitting an artist primed for a bigger stage. An unassuming innocence still decorates the sound and a grounded essence blends a DIY past with tinges of enhanced sophistication. The ten tracks throw a comfort blanket over the listening experience with a tender warmth radiating from finely etched vocals. Katie Spencer is a mood maker with a deft touch connecting seamlessly through her adhering music.

Four singles have formed a lengthy run up to the release date with the final one proving the most interesting lyrically. ‘It Was Then That I Knew Love’ deals with the positive side to an adoption and will resonate with the hoards experiencing a similar feeling. ‘Come Back and Find Me’ was the introductory part of the fruits of this endeavour and its tuneful chorus line embeds neatly into the record’s psyche. Another single, the title track ‘What Love Is’, opens the album and instantly reveals what Spencer and her team have been conjuring up, namely making delightful music. ‘Cold Stone’ completed the single collection with a haunting lengthy instrumental intro giving way to faint vocals applying a fine touch to the canvas. The sonic landscape is repeatedly adorned with the subtle application of clarinet, pedal steel, synth and assorted percussion, all leaving space for the integral guitar to blossom in centre stage. 

Outside the singles, the outlier is the instrumental ‘Back to the Brightness Above’ highlighting a capability to tempt cool vibes from precision filtered musicianship leading to a cathartic sound bath exhibition. Although there are stark differences in the vocals, there is much akin to the music made by Laura Marling, perhaps the simmering quality of temptingly crafted slow tunes. ‘Forget Me Not’ immerses the album into a delicate pool of mindfulness, in the same realm as ‘Stranger’, likewise the sensory majesty of 'Home'. ‘Goodbye’ paves the way for a graceful exit before ‘Carry It All’ tenderly closes this chapter in a perpetual haze of gilded effortless guitar replicating a trait that continues to define Katie Spencer’s music. 

Katie Spencer is now the architect of five records, three full albums and two EPs, since entering the recording world in 2017. The progression has been steady, punctured by that awful blip that stumped most artists in 20-21. Even in the early post-pandemic days you felt enhanced recognition was only around the corner, and now that promise is being fulfilled by international bookings supplementing a burgeoning domestic appreciation. WHAT LOVE IS is a supreme extension to what drives Katie Spencer creatively. The needle is delicately moved forward retaining the intimacy and charm that invigorates the live show. Tasteful progression is a testament to an artist anchored in an ideal but willing to explore new places for their undisputed talent to prosper.  

Album Review: Ninebarrow - The Hour of the Blackbird

 

www.ninebarrow.co.uk

 

Dorset-based folk duo Ninebarrow have ambitiously reshaped the past on a new record adorned with choral splendour. Five albums across a dozen years kept Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere busy in the studio alongside countless other ventures and career advancing activities. The pair’s sixth album is somewhat of a greatest hits with a twist. THE HOUR OF THE BLACKBIRD not only enjoys the multiple talents of Jon and Jay but the voices of two choirs - Hampshire’s Hart Voices and Surrey’s Chantry Singers. The crux of the album is that thirteen previously recorded songs (a mix of originals, covers and traditional pieces) open in the conventional way of their original format before layers of choral voices are weaved in injecting a sense of grandeur - both stirring and deeply emotive. The result is an innovative aural massage breathing fresh life into well-rehearsed material. 

All bar one of the tracks appear on previous Ninebarrow albums, the odd one out being the title track ‘The Hour of the Blackbird’, which was a lockdown charity single. This was the template for the approach defying enforced distance by taking a bunch of remotely digitally recorded voices and melding them into a finished product of finesse. Five years later the same song reappears though this time the beneficiary of enhanced studio work blending the choirs input with the core skills of Jon and Jay. Fans of Ninebarrow can experience a sense of familiarity by comparing the originals and these re-interpreted efforts. They largely stand side-by-side in a state of beauty with a difference. Curious new observers get the double edged joy of part-conventional Ninebarrow and the pleasure of a lavish topping of multi-toned exquisite voices displaying strength in numbers. 

Ninebarrow draw on many themes for their work from a broad celebration of nature to intrinsic humane acts of marvel. They have a penchant for modernising old stories and borrow select songs of personal appeal. Seduced by folk convention, they also deal in good old rousing traditional songs and the odd shanty. These have defined the narrative for the first dozen years of Ninebarrow’s professional music career and pull together in this new collection driven by the duo’s flare to explore and push the boundaries of what fans usually expect.

THE HOUR OF THE BLACKBIRD captures Ninebarrow’s mission to etch the joy of song onto a widespread landscape and exploit the presence that more is better when fine voices reinvigorate the texture. The choral adaption is novel and expertly crafted. The result is an embracing listening experience caressing the mind with cloudless music.