An Essex native with a deep affection for 70s Laurel Canyon folk, indie rock and country, with songs that draw on the lives and struggles of those closest to her. Telling Me is her second album, albeit written in her early 30s and recorded during the 2021 lockdown. Variously accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Dave Holmes his co-producer guitarist Sam Curtis, pianist Sam Beer, drummer Pat Kenneally and Spencer Cullum on pedal steel, it opens with the strumalong ‘Blink’, a bittersweet reflection on how quickly things you think are forever change (“I had a dream last night…Made feel again like I did back when we were younger/Sitting on the wall/Like we had it all/We were lost in time and caught up in foolish wonder/How could I be so mistaken?/When you blink and see it go…And just like that/You’re looking back”).
A similar sentiment informs the Fleetwood Mac shaded ‘Waiting Game’ (“That ship sailed some time ago/No that could never be/Beautiful in moments, but nothing comes for free/Putting my mind to the test and got me thinking twice/About the life I knew so well, all things have a price …clouds are changing colour now and light has reappeared/But I still see reflections of my biggest fear”), with its chorus conclusion for a “Life alone and best feet forward”.
Things are no more upbeat on the steel-laced Americana folksiness of the relationship ending ‘Telling Me’ (“Scared of all this letting go/I’m running back to what I know/It’s hurting, for certain/Cast aside my hopes and dreams/It’s harder than it seems to make these choices/And all these voices telling me what I should do/And either way it feels like I’m choosing, but I’m losing/And it feels like they’re all telling me/How to feel and how to be”). Couched in a steady, mountain country frame, the heart fares no better for ‘Lonely Rose’(“you’re worlds away from me/And my heart is all in flame/How I wish you’d feel the same…I know it’s borrowed time/How long will I call you mine?”), the music remaining in a country vein for ‘Sweet Time’ where the likes of DeMent and Harris serve as touchstones on a song about mental turmoil and exhaustion (“the thoughts in your head are going round and around/Every time I try and set you straight/Your heavy heart is feeling the weight”) as she consoles “You don’t have to look me in the eye/No don’t explain, don’t even try …dealing in your own sweet time/Waiting for the stars to align…you’re a deep old river/An endless giver, with a gentle mind”).
Picking up the thematic thread, the rhythmically chopper ‘Tides’ with its distant echoing electric guitar and Wurlitzer, opens with her asking “Where’s my weary mind?/Been thinking too long/I’ve lost the will to find/The things I’ve dreamt of/It’s all been decided on/And I’m not free now/At least it feels this way”, again faced with how everything you thought you knew “Has turned like the tides/Right before your eyes” and you’re left to make difficult choices to “keep this dream awake”.
By now it’s fairly clear this isn’t an album you turn to to lift your spirits, rather consolation that others share the same disappointments, anxieties and heartaches, and so we come to the musically deceptively breezy backwoods folk and pedal steel of ‘Like This’ (“I’m too tired to argue, too weary to fight/All these worries and woes have kept me sleepless at night/I’ve got no more to say to you but this/Why did our love ever end up like this?”). But then, just as you’re reaching for the razor blade, there’s a ray of light piercing the dark clouds with the pattering drums and bustling guitar rhythm of ‘What Would I Do’ and the upbeat “I feel like the times have changed, unreal but I know now for sure…constant like the morning light/Break of day the starry night/When the moon is on the rise/My world is turning in your eyes…though the days are different now/Nothing matters anyhow/Everything I had to do/Every road has led to you”. And while the relationship is a rocky road looking for greener grass (“Your reckless heart needs a rest/It’s made the worst of what was best/So dry your tears and compromise/Take your leaving none the wise/‘Coz you think there’s something better/And you think there’s someone new”) there’s still a positivity to the piano-based folk-gospel tinted ‘Without Her Loving You’ (“Will she wait for you in vain/Or find another to ease the pain/No, she’ll be brave, she’ll be true/She needs nobody if it’s not you”) if only you can see “what you’re needing/Is right in front of you”).
Such relative optimism can’t last of course, and so things fall back to earth with the stripped back countrified strum of ‘Missing Out’ where silver screen romance doesn’t mirror reality (“I know it paints a pretty picture/But things aren’t all that they seem/And it’s easy to keep believing/What you see on your screen/But it’s gone tomorrow, and you might as well give it up/If it don’t make you happy enough/You might as well give it in”). Even so, there’s the wisdom here that “Life is made of time, so don’t you worry it away”.
Picking up that hint at mortality, it ends on a more accepting and positive note with the nimble fingerpicked ‘Resting Blues’, a funeral elegy as such as she sings “The bells of the cathedral chime for you now/I heard that you were reckless/Rolling, real and reckless/Hard to get through/Living on the edges/Doing what your heart says/Searching for your muse/Now I sing your resting blues”. To borrow from Jackson C.Frank, her blues run the game.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.oneofakindpr.co.uk/lucy-kitt
‘Waiting Game’ – officially live:
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