LUCY KITCHEN – In The Low Light (own label)

Another album (her third) with songs written in the run up to and aftermath of the Southampton-based singer’s husband’s death, of grieving and coming to terms with loss. She’s accompanied on In The Low Light by co-producer Tali Trow on guitars, banjo, piano and mellotron, Jon Thorne on double bass, drummer Pat Kenneally, Michael Davies on pedal steel with strings by Peter Mojzeš.

It’s a fragile folk-veined work, coloured by both traditional and contemporary influences, opening with the muted percussion, chilled keyboard notes and slow and slow swaying ‘Winter King’ with its theme of yearning and loss (“And if I venture/Deep into the trees/Would you dance with me upon a breeze/Oh if only you were here”), while, following a similar theme there’s a more up-tempo note with the shuffling banjo shaded and Americana-tinged ‘In My Corner’ and its mingling of grief (“it’s in the low light/That I miss you most/I’ve been searching the seasons/For your spirit or your ghost”) and determination to move on (“I’m trying to be stronger/Trying to live how we talked about/Forging a new way/Through the dirt and the dust”) but adds “I miss you in my corner/Telling me I’m the one”.

The sentiments continue with the strings-swathed dreamy 40s balladry styled ‘The Ways We Were’ (which does indeed musically nod to the Streisand classic) as she sings of time moving on and wishing “could I pull myself back/Or pull you forward somehow/Through time/So I won’t forget”).

Introspection is put on hold for ‘Olivia’, offering advice (“I’ve got time and an ear for you/And a bottle of wine/And I’m not saying that I’ll see you through/But I’ll try”) to a friend going through a break-up that “Sometimes the ones that we love aren’t the ones that we should/It tears at our hearts and it does us no good”.

Samuel Ehret-Pickett on brass coda, the slow-walking ‘Blue Light’ returns to the realities of loss and change (“baby it’s cold/With no one to hold me/Now you’re gone”) but also the constancy that memory brings (“You’re still the one/Who kissed me on main street/In the rain”). Another retro jazz-brushed swayer, ‘Milk & Honey’ is she says about “wishing for things to be different, simpler, uncomplicated but knowing that you can’t have that and how you come to terms with accepting that”, caught in twilight insomnia and wishing “that I could dream/Of better times/Cuz all my dreams are like nightmares/Of losing you”.

Putting death on the back burner, double-bass and flute bring a warmer breeze to the jazzy pastoral ‘Sunny Days’ where you might hear buried hints of Laura Nyro, the same upbeat musical and lyrical disposition colouring ‘Red Skies’ with its pedal steel and Americana clouds asking “Do you wanna go out drinking/I know it’s only Tuesday night/Find a little corner/Drink the wine get giddy get high” because “there’s devils in those skies tonight”.

The mood doesn’t last, however, as it comes crashing down with ‘Chemo Song (Sleeping Song)”, written in winter about watching her husband sleeping after his first chemotherapy session aware that things are coming to the end (“Feels like we’ve been holding our breath/All winter long…while we wait for snow/But I love him so/I’m not ready to let him go”).

Taking its cue from Greek mythology and Charon, the ferryman across the River Styx to the Underworld, underpinned by guitar and organ, the album’s most wrenching number, ‘The Boatman’ opens starkly with the lines “I’m gonna bury my grief/Beneath the brown and rotting leaves/Of this stormy winter/I’m gonna take that love/And all that was lost/And let it go/For my true love’s gone now/And I am left here alone/With my heart/That is hollow and dry”, and unfolds to wanting to not remain behind but be reunited in death (“oh love I’m weary/My soul is tired/My body aches/I pray that death will take me/And I’ll see my love again…leave me here while the waters rise/Lay me out I’m waiting for the boatman/To see me to the other side”).

Featuring just voice and rippling watery guitar, it closes with ‘September’s Come’, where she seeks to reclaim her favourite time of year but now a constant reminder of her husband’s passing, transitioning from grief and rebuilding life through music’s healing powers (“Now September’s come/And I’m full of songs/They’re pouring out my blood/Covering me like the leaves/On the ground/Full of memories”).

On ‘In My Corner’ she asks her late husband “Would you be proud of me/And all I’ve said and done?”. Listening to In The Low Light and how she’s processed everything, you know he would be.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.lucykitchen.com

‘The Boatman’ – official video:

---

We all give our spare time to run folking.com. Our aim has always been to keep folking a free service for our visitors, artists, PR agencies and tour promoters. If you wish help out and donate something (running costs currently funded by Paul Miles), please click the PayPal link below to send us a small one off payment or a monthly contribution.

---