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Carol Grimes

Mother

Irregular Records

Album description

One of the great British female vocalists, this is Carol’s first solo album in several years. ‘Mother’ features her warm, inimitable voice on twelve tracks, from a variety of fine contemporary writers.

In a career spanning a remarkable four decades, there are few musical genres that Carol has not inhabited and made her own, and ‘Mother’ shuffles her musical deck in an artful, entertaining and thoroughly engaging way.

Commencing in a suitably carousing, jazz / blues vein with ‘New Coat Of Paint’, an early-vintage Tom Waits opus, there follows an intimate reading of the Nick Cave confessional, ‘Into My Arms’.

Similarly striking, is her version of the Sandy Denny / Fairport Convention classic, ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’, here recast with a string arrangement of rare beauty, underpinning a vocal of grace and great sensitivity.

Perhaps less well-known is ‘Scars’, a song from the pen of Fran Landesman (the Dorothy Parker of the Jazz world), in which Carol effortlessly wrings the best out of the song's astringent humour.

A witty re-interpretation of Randy Newman‘s 'Better Off Dead’ is followed by Joni Mitchell's (‘Two Grey Rooms’) and Ron Sexsmith's (‘Gold In Them Hills’). The results are contrasting in terms of their emotional reach, but equally incisive and charming.

‘USA’, by Shane MacGowan, is an excellent song that Carol personalises superbly, infusing MacGowan’s lyric of disillusionment with a patina of her own experience.

Carol contributes two of her own songs – ‘Moira’, and ‘Blues For Louis’.

A thoroughly invigorating, multi-faceted and absorbing album.