Sharron Kraus - The Woody Nightshade

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

5...according to our Phil on Thu 18 Nov, 2010.

This is lovely. I've heard this a couple of times now and it's totally doing it for me. I've never really heard too much by her before apart from her previous collaboration with Meg Baird and Helena Espvall. Firstly her voice is lovely, it's both haunting and soothing on the ears and it really suits the music it's sitting on. On this album he's dropped the banjos and fiddles for more of an electric sound apparently but as I'm not too familiar with her previous work I can't say much about that. It sounds like very traditional english folk to me... Just overhead Ant say that Dave mans a lighthouse at the weekend watching the fog... Don't know how I'm supposed to write reviews with interesting shit like that going on in the background. The songs are simple and stripped back, no bells and whistles, it's just simple folk music played and sung brilliantly. They're talking about eating seagulls now.... Christ.... Almost like a female Alasdair Roberts I reckon and fans of Espers, Meg Baird, Shirley Collins etc. will totally love this as do I. A solid folk album!

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

"British singer and musician Sharron Kraus has firmly established herself as a genuine heiress to the UK folk ancestry of Shirley Collins, Lal Waterson, or Maddy Prior…performing with a sparkling clear voice that can sound as ancient and elemental as rain, stone, or soil." - Matthew Murphy, Pitchfork

Sharron Kraus is a UK-based singer, musician and songwriter whose craft defiantly recasts yet tenderly cherishes the folk traditions of England and Appalachia. Kraus summons a sound imbued in darkness yet is somehow enveloped in an aura shimmering with heavenly luminescence; her songs tell intricate tales of rootless souls, dark secrets and earthly joys, carried high by an astonishing and inimitable voice of bell-clear sonority. With a tableau of critically-acclaimed albums, collaborations and projects across the past decade, Kraus has forged a musical path bewtiched by the dark side of folk music and its traditions while lifting its veil to the sunlight of modern times. The Woody Nightshade is the newest entry into Kraus' canon, a body of work that is her finest and most ambitious to date - and, notably, the least overtly "folky" of the bunch.

The Woody Nightshade takes an amble down a slightly different route along Sharron Kraus' musical path. Reminiscent of the expanded instrumentation and compositional arrangements found on The Fox's Wedding (released on David Tibet/Current 93's Durtro/Jnana label, 2008), gone are the traditional folk tools of the trade, such as the familiar use of banjo and fiddles, in favor of drums, electric guitar and bass. While that may sound as though Kraus has "gone electric", she uses this foray into broader instrumentation as texture and color, wrapping coarse velvet and splashing subtle earth tones over her songs. Kraus's signature has always been her distinctive vocals, and her idiosyncratic siren sound is in top form throughout The Woody Nightshade. As a first, Kraus is joined alternately by a trio of singers, providing harmony on some tunes and dissonance on others, a turn that furthers the textured qualities and inherent duality in her musical vision. The result is a much more folk-inspired album than folk-saturated, and although a feeling of claustrophobia seems to permeate throughout The Woody Nightshade, shining moments of serenity are present to ease the foreboding tension. Timely and timeless, The Woody Nightshade is a triumph by one of the most original and innovative artists presiding over today's new folk idiom.

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!