| (Self-released)
Maddie’s young, welcoming voice belies a darkly evocative lyricism creating an album that is both unsettling and thrilling Vermont-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Fern Maddie fell for British and Irish traditional music in her teens, then inhaled folk songs and began songwriting, encouraged by her composer father. After his early death, she decided to live her life making music in tribute to him in her own curious way. She now makes a podcast about traditional music, Of Song and Bone, writes music in her woodland cabin, tends goats, and documents her life, without embellishment, on Instagram. Ghost Story is Maddie’s powerful, immediate 10-track debut (you can imagine her singing its songs on festival stages, as if early-career Sharon Van Etten had been diverted on to an ancient, rougher road). The mood throughout evokes the dimly lit intimacy of early 2000s albums by Diane Cluck, Emilíana Torrini and Nina Nastasia, with added warmth. Tunes are often carried by banjo or guitar, supported by low strings, the percussive shudder of bones, or on Scottish ballad Ca’ the Yowes, a synthesiser providing a strangely fitting, scratchy counterpoint. Continue reading... |
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