Nick Drake playing in a band. Backing Sibylle Baier or Nico or Vashti Bunyan on a series of wistful songs, reveries to forgotten moments. These were my immediate thoughts when listening to Australian musician and artist Lucy Roleff's second, recently released second album Left Open in a Room. They were thoughts that remained as I made my way through the record.
Roleff has an interesting backstory. Classically trained and born to a German opera singing father and a Maltese mother, she's blessed with a rich cultural heritage and explores it here. If she's something of a musical magpie, half lifting the melody line to Cohen's Suzanne at one point in Rheingold, she has gifts of her own and this is an easeful and thoughtful record. If originality isn't it's main draw there's plenty here to recommend it anyhow.
Joni's fingerprints are here too. In the willingness to take things slowly to drive home the point. To concentrate on stillness, the innate poetry of words. Not a record that surprises after its initial songs set the mood but one that fans of this kind of thing might enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment