Josienne Clarke
Parenthesis, I
The Arts Desk 80点相当
Uncut 70点相当
https://klofmag.com/2024/05/josienne-clarke-parenthesis-i/
Just voice and watery fingerpicked guitar, while influences such as Nick Drake, Sandy Denny and Anaïs Mitchell are often cited, Fear Of Falling also casts her as a pastoral folk prototype for newcomers such as Katherine Priddy and Flo Perlin, though it also filters the Americana colours of Courtney Marie Andrews in a song about leaving the past behind and embracing the future (not flying for fear of falling), the lyrics peppered with imagery drawn from her new home on the Isle of Bute (“The birds are singing brightly in the tall trees of Skeoch wood/And scarcely I believed that peace of mind in life could be as good”).
Of a jazzier persuasion, Do You Know Now?, with its nervy, neurotic keyboard pulse, is an exorcism of sorts as she sings, “There’s no blood and no bone/To connect me to you/No familiar, no friend/Every contact cut or ended… do you know now/That no part of me/Is a part of you”, whether that’s disconnecting from a person or a mental state. Coloured with sax, Looking Glass sustains that cool, jazzy vibe to a song that conjures a composed detachment (“Poised and precise/Glass and ice/Always be nice/Just a slice, a sliver/Fine on the eye/I can reliably refine/What you like”) while the plucked electric guitar figure and glacial Forbearing wrings the heart with lyrics that touch on the despair of her miscarriages (“It broke my heart/‘Til I, willing to die/Could see no light/In my fruitless life”) and the way it made her feel about herself (“If damaged fruit/Is all I can give to you/That‘ll have to do… I can’t bear/Bring myself to blame myself again/It isn’t fair/We’re all taught to tear ourselves apart”).
英国のフォーク系SSW
Ben Walker と4枚ほどアルバムを出したのちにソロへ
Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker
The Seas Are Deep
