Cat’s Cradle, by Pinkie Maclure and John Wills
by Ian Simmons
[ cdreviews ]
After their recent electronic outing as Lumen, Maclure and Wills return to the largely acoustic format for which they are best known, but with some pretty eccentric instrumentation. The eight songs here are spun out of a fabric consisting of melodeon, bells, miniature concertina, e-bow, lyre, guitar and drums and, of course, Pinkie’s gorgeous voice. While I found Cat’s Cradle a little less immediately appealing than their Lumen work, this is still a fine album that stands out against the flood of the relentlessly modern; it could have been recorded almost any time.
The instrumentation here is sparse and spacious, giving plenty of room for Maclure’s velvet tones to do their stuff. She has a stunning and marvellously flexible voice, steeped in torch-song and cabaret but equally capable of tackling the traditional ‘Fine flowers in the Valley’ with a verve that would give pause to June Tabor, another singer equally at home with folk and jazz. Her vocal stylings are exemplary, going from throaty rasps to high register shrieks with barely a sign of effort, and touching songs with blues inflections and a clear knowledge of experimental technique.
While Maclure’s voice is the most obvious point for comment here, it should not be thought that this is entirely her show. The singing would not be nearly so effective without the musical framing John Wills brings to the disc. It is sensitive and subtle, allowing Maclure to breathe and explore the sonic space thus created, inflecting the whole disc with a gentle, melancholic yearning in a way few others could manage. This is clearly a product of one of those almost-telepathic musical partnerships that are exceedingly rare and to be much savoured whenever they are found, the two musicians have an instinctive rapport that comes across in every note and line - a relatively short, but most satisfying piece of work.
