Song, by Toad

This is very much not the sort of music I would expect to like, but it’s just so gorgeous I can’t help myself.  I found this lovely lady over at Lonesome Music and somehow failed to notice that the album was in fact originally recorded in 1971.  Up until the point that the penny finally dropped I found myself thinking ‘gosh, this sounds so, so old-fashioned, I can’t believe it’s a current album’ and even ‘look at the picture, she even looks like she’s from the 70s’ and other such idiotic gems.  Well the fact that this is a 2007 re-release of an album that – wait, really? – was originally recorded in 1971, was quite enough to confuse your chowder-headed amphibious host.
Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, because it’s a genuinely gorgeous, gorgeous album.  It’s summery, woozy and dreamy soul with a lush, slightly cinematic air that lulls and relaxes and warms and cuddles.  Lovely, truly lovely stuff.  It’s even managed to subvert my generally rather limited enthusiasm for this kind of folk-soul sort of stuff.

This must be the most beautiful thing ever to emerge from Halifax – it’s barely conceivable to juxtapose this shimmering loveliness with that depressed, miserable and thoroughly unpleasant Northern sink-hole – but Halifax is where she’s from.  Mind you, the fact that the strings and woodwind backing were provided by the London Symphony Orchestra might have some bearing on the beauty of this record.  Basically, the whole album feels as if you are watching a beguilingly naive hippy girl twirling through a field of blooms on a hot Summer’s day, the whole thing shot through a lens as liberally smothered in vaseline as a choirboy’s chocolate starfish.  Splendid.  Even indie fundamentalists such as myself can love this – Dusty in Memphis, you’re next!

Catherine Howe – Up North
Catherine Howe – It’s Not Likely

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