Kate Rusby

近来民谣女声似乎挺火，光看专辑Cover的温馨，便可以推测出这张唱片的整体调调。只是很难想像，原来这个33岁女人的声音竟然如此精致，原来这张专辑已经是她个人的第7张，原来她已经荣获过2届BBC Radio Folk大奖。原来这是Kate在婚变和制作人的决裂后自己发行的专辑。一切一切的原来只是让我对这女人产生更浓厚的兴趣。其实关注这张专辑纯粹是因为Aamzon榜单的高排名，当听到第一首标题曲目就似乎注定了这张民谣专辑又会是我接下来一段日子里生活的音乐了。和谐，真诚而又宽慰人的嗓音，彻头彻尾让我联想到了歌曲同样可以像诗一样美伦美幻的吟唱，质朴的钢琴声，清脆的吉他声，这些词语基本都会与民谣有联系。只是觉得Kate的嗓音真的很特别，很自然，很纯。总之，一切夸大的修饰说多了也是浪费，需要自己的验证才可以体会那种一扫阴霾，雨后彩虹般的欣然。 

Awkward Annie

Bitter Boy

John Barbury

High on a Hill

Farewell

Planets

The Old Man

Andrew Lammie

Streams of Nancy

Daughter of Heaven

Blooming Heather

The Village Green Preservation Society

Light Beyond The Lines

Light Years

Glorious (Radio Edit)

民谣女歌手Kate Rusby从出生起就住在南约克郡的巴恩斯利，并且是在一个音乐世家长大的。 她的父母有一个同乐会式的舞蹈团体，在她儿时，父母就将英国民谣介绍给了她。然后她就同姐姐Emma一起加入那个同乐会，偶尔唱一些和声，演奏小提琴。12岁十，她成为了吉他主奏。

15岁，她在Holmfirth音乐节上开始自己的Solo生涯，在那里她被介绍给了另一位年轻的年轻的民谣女歌手Kathryn Roberts，她们开始一起演出，过了一段时间的磨合，以她俩名字一起的专辑出版了，这张专辑获得了那年（1995年）民谣音乐的一个奖项。Kate还同女子民谣合唱团体The Poozies合作，包括1997年的专辑Come Raise Your Head和1998年的Infinite Blue。


Kate Rusby专辑介绍：Vocal cut-ups collide over wig-spinning everything-and-the-kitchen-sink beats. Electric guitars flame up and roar in a way that would have a frightened My Bloody Valentine asking for their mums, and their mums asking for their mums. Bass plunges to previously unfathomed bone-liquidising depths. If you can possibly imagine Foo Fighters playing at the same time as The Prodigy playing at the same time as a band made up of every member of The Fall (ever) and every member of The Polyphonic Spree (ever), all expressing themselves through the medium of interpretive air-raid three counties away, but with such intensity you’d swear they were dropping bombs inside every cell of your being (and from a sound system so vast Malcolm Tucker would have to move out of the TARDIS to leave room for the noise), then – hey! – congratulations. You’re just under a third of the way there…

Of course, it’s not like that at all. Why would it be? Why would anyone imagine Kate Rusby might radically alter what it is she goes about or the way she goes about it? GHOST (incredibly, her fourteenth album since 1995) does use production to draw ears to a different side of the music but, despite that freshening, it’s more-or-less as expected and that’s no bad thing. Steady away. Over the years her gentle conservatism (caution, even – successive releases bringing only a slight refinement of a tried-and-trusted formula) has been comforting. See Kate Rusby’s particular area of folk music as a neat corner of National Trust estate, if you like. A Northern field with really good facilities. A hectare of pastoral calm protected and maintained by a dedicated enthusiast raised on the land, producing a roughly biennial crop. Let’s call it the Contemporary Crossover. Sure, occasionally you might get the Mumford family going on holiday by mistake, tearing up from the smoke with Sons in the back of the Chelsea tractor and pitching a tent in the next field, before returning home with a box of authentic farm eggs for Grandma to suck. Sometimes, on the way to fight a / the / any good fight, Billy Bragg and his band of Merry Men stop off just down the lane for sustenance and an overnight sack out. That There Paul Weller once rented a cottage nearby when he got fed up with his pad somewhere in the city. So how ridiculous – hideous – would it be if Kate Rusby suddenly built a shoe-box estate and a shopping complex on her patch? As I People-Carriered Out? Here We Come A-Halfpricesaleing? Jolly Barista Boys? No, thank you…

Co-produced with husband Damien O’Kane and engineered by brother Joe (who has the wonderful knack of positioning his sister in the mix so she sings right in your ear) GHOST is immediately recognisable, though it continues the O’Kane-influenced stealth shift into looser, sometimes darker, arrangements begun on parts of MAKE THE LIGHT in 2010 and then furthered by 2012’s celebratory collection of rerecordings, TWENTY. Things tend to have a little more dust in the air around them, which subtly affects but doesn’t change the familiar mix of ancient murder ballads, ghost stories and tragedies of the heart.

Opening with an interpretation of THE OUTLANDISH KNIGHT is a mischievous surprise. Bleak and sinister (basically Nick Cave’s WHERE THE WILD ROSES GROW if performed three centuries ago), brooding strings spread like mist on the water as a grim serial killer finally gets his comeuppance. Breezy WE WILL SING is a spring-to-summer delight – Julian Sutton’s accordion bouncing right through banjo from guest Ron Block (who first came into the fold on TWENTY and has also recorded with Dolly Parton and Alison Krauss). THREE JOLLY FISHERMAN pulls on an Arran jumper and casts a net around a certain section of Rusby’s crowd – this is one for real ale drinking middle-aged anglers to soundtrack their catches. Blokeish pursuits also feature in THE MAGIC PENNY (a skint soldier gambles on dice and ends the night rolling drunk), and money figures again in the comedic THE SILLY OLD MAN.

I AM SAD (first heard as an ‘in session’ extra on the LIVE IN LEEDS DVD ten years ago, but remaining unrecorded until now) finally sees the light of day – or, rather, the murk of depressed days. Hopeful AFTER THIS could be heard as a wedding song, with a simple chorus about bells ringing and the verses having all faith in the future (though it also seems to reference THE MOCKING BIRD from MAKE THE LIGHT). Becoming a mother twice over in recent times suggests something far happier than THE BONNIE BAIRNS turns out to be. It’s amongst the saddest of Rusby’s ghost stories, and Steven Iverson’s beautiful minstrel-like electric guitar phrases lend it a distant medieval air – a reminder that being dead lasts for a long time. The album closes on its title track, with subtle effects ghosting quietly as Rusby performs solo at the piano. In a way that suggests a full circle or closure of some sort as, of course, solo at a piano is how she began two decades ago…

Whether it turns out to be the end of something or the start of something else, or even just some more of the middle, GHOST is a fine record. The production touches mean it takes marginally longer to settle in but, like all of her previous work, it will find great favour with audiences of both BBC6 Music (Mark Radcliffe is a particular advocate) and Radio 2 which, in itself, is quite some feat for a modest lass from Barnsley. Sleep sound in your beds; Kate Rusby is still tending her piece of land with the utmost care.

(The Mouth Magazine)


Ghost

Kate Rusby2004年的专辑Underneath the Stars，这是传说中她最好的一张，Let Me Be，Polly...都非常好听。

Underneath the Stars

https://image.joox.com/JOOXcover/0/8b7b0bd8f4e41561/300

Awkward Annie

Song List

Awkward Annie

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