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| Rebecca Jade - The Distaff Muse |
Rebecca Jade – The Distaff Muse
The delightful is carrying two things right now. One is her
immense songwriting talent and the other is a baby. Now, I don’t know an awful
lot about babies (they’re small and intermittently cute, terrifying and
amazing) but I do know a good songwriter when I hear one so that is what I am
going to write about. The Distaff Muse is the debut long player from the Welsh
songstress and her band of merry men and it truly is a thing of beauty. Opening
track What Happens Next? starts off as a frail, delicate slip of a song before
emerging in to the world as a sashaying, lilting Indie stomper swathed in
harmonies, distortion and a Flaming Lips-esque sense of the grandiose. Not bad
for a hello. Echo Strikes Out Alone is a more typical indie tune and has me
thinking of teenage one-non-hit wonders that I bought from local record shops
on 7 inch vinyl (Milk, Linoleum, Frente). But it’s on 3rd track,
Brother, that the soul of this album starts to shine through. A tale of sibling
love covered in a thick layer of that special kind of Sunday morning home
sickness that city dwellers who have grown up in the country get. For a first
album, The Distaff Muse is incredibly brave in the honesty and fragility that
it displays; it’s real heart on the sleeve stuff.
Hospital Corners is a more up tempo ditty that explores the
notion of ‘opposites attract’ better than Paula Abdul and that cartoon cat ever
did and leaves you in a more comfortable place thinking you know what’s going
on with this record. And then You Do happens. The first half of You Do sounds
like the Edge noodling away under a pile of sustain and delay in front of a
soggy crowd at Red Rocks back when U2 didn’t own Ireland. Now, for me, this is
no bad thing but coming smack in the middle of what I would firmly call an
Indie record, it is a real slap across the chops. The second half of the song
is a bittersweet strum along that could have been recorded on a wet afternoon
in Wales and about as far from the atmosphere of the song’s openings as
possible. As if to compound the oddness that this record has now descended in to,
Rebecca Jade calls a song Entirely Instrumental and then goes and puts lyrics
to it – Instru-mental if you ask me!
Throughout all the oddness (note, NOT kookiness) though,
this record is wondrous thing and something that can be enjoyed and studied at
the same time. I don’t like to pick a favourite song out as I’m a
traditionalist and believe albums should be devoured as one complete work, but
if you’re scared by the challenge of this record then a good point to jump in
would be Shaking My Heart (Where My Head Should’ve Been). It’s a romper stomper
of a break-up song with a pounding piano refrain from Jeremy Radway, fuzzy
guitars and a sense of anger mixed with fun that is infectious and ever so slightly
Super Furry Animals-esque. The album concludes with the sexy and sassy Willow
Walk which perfectly displays Rebecca Jade’s vocal style from Regina Spektor
style operatic interludes, attitude laden shouty bits and delicately fragile moments
that crescendo in to apocalyptic venomous outbursts. At one point I swear it
could be PJ Harvey dueting with Nick Cave as the album stumbles and staggers to
a drained and dishevelled climax. But it’s not. It’s Rebecca Jade and Bass man
Andrew Pridding on vocal duties but the climax is just as satisfying.
This is one of the longer reviews I’ve done recently and I
think that’s testament to the intricacy, complexity and substance that The
Distaff Muse provides. We are not talking about a polished, immaculately
produced work of art here but we are talking about the kind of album that can
really inspire a person in to thinking a little differently or looking at the
world in another way. I’m talking about the kind of album that you can sit and
listen to, not as background music but as something to really get to grips with
over a bottle of red wine. And considering all these ideas came from the heart,
mind and soul of one woman I think that makes Rebecca Jade Jnr a very lucky
little tyke indeed!
Download the album for a bargain £4 @ http://rebeccajade.bandcamp.com/