As part of the second wave of nu-metal, Kittie will always be best known for a couple of cult singles from their debut album, ‘Spit’. While one of those tracks, ‘Charlotte’ remains arguably one of their finest recordings, the all-female growlers carved out a career that by the end of 2016 had released six albums and had experimented with various metal-based subgenres. Band founder and drummer Mercedes Lander launched a new band near the end of that year…and on the basis of their first studio recording, The White Swan puts the entire Kittie catalogue in the shade.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
AS THE SUN SLEEPS – As Good As Gold EP
Since the turn of the millennium, a vast amount of music peddled as pop-punk hasn’t resembled the classic pop-punk sound of the nineties at all, but shifted rather more towards whining emo-dom or lightweight post-hardcore. The UK’s As The Sun Sleeps not only play pop-punk in the traditional sense, but are also bloody good at it.
SUN HOLLOW SUN – Before We Ever Met EP
Sun Hollow Sun’s first release – 2013’s ‘No History’ EP – presented four enjoyable pieces of semi-acoustic roots music. With clean guitar work and easy harmonies, a touch of jazziness to the lead vocal and a set of well written songs, they not only set upon a timeless style but also showed they had the chops to take on more established acts. Three years on, the ‘Before We Ever Met’ doesn’t really meddle with that formula but, if anything, does an even smarter job.
JOHN CEE STANNARD & BLUES HORIZON – Stone Cold Sober
A cult figure on the British folk circuit in the late 60s, John Cee Stannard was a founder member of Tudor Lodge, whose 1971 LP (released on Vertigo Records) has a reputation of a cult classic. Alongside Stannard, the Lodge included Pentangle’s Danny Thompson on bass and an earlier line-up even included vocalist Linda Peters…who went on to find greater fame as Linda Thompson.
Stannard continued to record as the decades rolled away, but penned surprisingly little himself until finding inspiration in 2011. In 2014, his ‘Bus Stop Blues’, a collection of acoustic based blues tunes recorded with Blues Horizon, found favour upon release with a few blues-oriented websites. The following year, he repeated the same formula on ‘Stone Cold Sober’, an album which so often has an understated style, but also a maturity in its song-craft and a laid back feel, resulting in a record that fuses the blues with Stannard’s folk rock roots and even has an almost country leaning in places.
HANNAH FISHER – Watching Time EP
Hannah Fisher will be known to some folk music fans as a member of Roddy Woomble’s live band and for her collaborations with another Scottish folkie, guitarist Sorren Maclean. Her 2014 solo release ‘Watching Time’ shows her to be someone who’s more than just a musical accomplice. Taking elements of Celtic folk and semi-acoustic singer-songwriter’s sounds, this EP’s five songs – three instrumental cuts, two vocal pieces – borrow from tradition, but also feel entirely contemporary and its material comes across with influences from Pentangle, Bert Jansch and a few nods to John McCusker and Eliza Carthy. All these elements, right from first listen, single out Fisher as an artist possessing a natural talent and a strong understanding of folk roots.