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In the final part of Krystof Kieslowski’s Three colours trilogy, Red, there is a dazzling opening sequence in which the camera follows red cables from the starting point of a phone call made in Geneva through switches and under the sea to England, only for the call to be rebuffed at the last by the flashing red light of a busy telephone.  It’s imagery that ‘The wires’ by Rachael Dadd from her new album The world outside is in a cupboard brings to mind.  Wires are also what puppeteers use to manipulate their creations – another recurring theme of Kieslowski’s films – but here I think we’re talking about wires and distance, like the ‘Lines running north’ that the young Del Amitri sang about.  ‘The wires’ has all the elements that go to make up the best of Rachael Dadd’s songs – the trueness of the singing voice, the rising, reaching melody and harmonics, the gentle dynamics which occasionally engulf you, and unsparing personal observation.  In its execution, though, this song alone establishes a connection to the way Minnesotan trio Low make their music – there is that same purity of purpose.

Listening to ‘The wires’ I can’t help thinking of Red; listening to the rest of The world outside…, I can’t help thinking of a record called Blue, a record I admire more than like, for all the listening I’ve given it.  But The world outside… is a warmer kind of self-portrait than Joni Mitchell’s, though it travels from January blues to the autumnal end of a day’s work, from fear and bravery to a state of golden-maned happiness.  The last is a token of an engagement with the natural world that belies the album’s title, for throughout, there’s a weight of animal threatening to burst out of the cupboard, or into the world.  Not unconnected with this, there are moments – ‘And when I cannot dream’ is one – where The world outside… comes close to the mellifluous, pain-tinged joy that Tim Buckley perfected on Blue afternoon.

But Rachael Dadd is obviously not in thrall to the blues of Tim or Joni any more than she could be to the red of Kieslowski.  Though her music occasionally tips its hat to tradition, hers is folk music which is not mired in the past.  It has the quality of, if not timelessness, then the closest any of us mortals can come to that, either as listeners or music-makers.  She shows no sign of the quirkiness which undoes some who do things the Fence Records way.  The world outside… may not be pop in its immediacy, but it is immediately affecting.  Like her recordings with Kate Stables and Virpi Kettu as Whalebone Polly, it doesn’t necessarily imprint itself on first listen, but instead floats and flies free.  Listening brings its rewards.  Songs like ‘Caught in the weight’, ‘Hawk for a heart’ and ‘The party’ share unassuming beginnings, but where they travel melodically and harmonically remains surprising.  Her music retains the simple acoustic warmth of previous releases, though added now are loops and rumbles of piano, while ‘Ships’ has a metronomic beat and ‘Bold bear’ an electric guitar; but at root there is a familiar and welcome sense of space.  To my ears Rachael Dadd is more Leaf than Fence, with a musical sensibility as fine-tuned and essence-seeking as Colleen, although the latter is a composer of quite distinct minimalist instrumental pieces.  There is even a resemblance between the artwork for Everyone alive wants answers and The world outside is in a cupboard.

Rachael Dadd never pretends to be something she isn’t.  There is no bar code on this CD.  In as far as it’s possible for it to be so, this is music unaffected by the commercial processing of the music business.  You can’t get The world outside… on Amazon (instead you need to go here, from where it’s but a short hop to the Hand – Rachael in combination with kora wiz Wig Smith – whose excellent Berries from the rubble EP is also well worth hearing).  That’s alternately frustrating and partly why the music of Rachael Dadd appeals as much as it does.  I hope her audience continues to grow, slowly but surely.

Up at Dundry, by St. Michael’s church, whose late gothic tower is given a Victorian echo by the edifice dedicated to Cabot on Brandon Hill down in the city, you can look to the north and see the whole of Bristol spread out beneath you.  The view flattens out what is a hilly city when you’re cycling or walking around it, but it’s good to be able to see the whole of it at once.  Long since an ex-Bristolian, I often imagine myself there, viewing both the space and the time, two panoramas blended into one, governed by squalls of rain and snow, periods of unending grey and, at the last, Redland sunshine.

I went to Bristol for friends already encamped in the south west’s capital, and I went there for music – for the songs those friends sang, for the pop idealism that revolved around Sarah Records, and for the cutting edge of Massive Attack.  These days, it always warms the heart to hear of sounds around which scenes not dissimilar to my own must revolve.  There’s Gravenhurst, whose thunder is quieter than Warp label mates Maxϊmo Park, but much worthier of attention.  I hope something comes of the Gloaming, Benjamin Shillabeer’s follow-up to the Playwrights.  And – with thanks to Tim, one of the broader circle of those encamped friends, for pointing me in the right direction – I can’t wait for the new album by Rachael Dadd.

Part of a sort of Bristolian version of the Fence collective, with an outpost or original base in Winchester, Rachael has previously released three long-players forming a set of songs which seem to evolve according to the musicians with whom she teams up – one song, ‘No sleep on the meadow’ appears on all three.  When the filigree and curlicues of Joanna Newsom’s collaboration with Van Dyke Parks become too much, as from time to time they do, then hers is the voice and the music to go to.  Take Songs from the crypt, that being the space beneath the church in which she recorded with the Missing Scissors, a mini-chamber orchestra of strings, harp, and clarinet.  Her voice is straight and true, within it only the barest tremor, unless she forces loudness, as she occasionally does.  It sits atop the Missing Scissors as a perfect tonal fit.  The orchestration is perfectly integrated and the results are thrilling, especially on the sequence ‘No sleep in the meadow’, ‘The scientist’, and ‘What we wait for’, which in a folkier way is as great as the heights reached by the Rachel’s collective on The sea and the bells or Selenography.

These three and other Songs from the crypt first appeared on Summer / autumn recordings, where it’s just Rachael’s voice, harmonica and guitar – and barking dogs and bird song.  Rachael sings and the birds sing back (let’s forget about the dogs).  It’s hard to call between the simpler and the orchestrated versions, but ‘My wealth that is you’ is such an intimate, domestically beautiful song that it works best here.  Occasionally she guilelessly turns a holiday or the taking of a photograph into song, but mostly they’re poetically conceived, with lines as striking as ‘Ten thousand seagulls circling high / drawing threads around you and I’.

In between Summer and Songs Rachael played as Whalebone Polly with Kate Stables and Virpi Kettu, all three contributing songs.  When Rachael adds her clarinet to the brew, Recording with the window open has something of the legendary Emily of ‘Boxing Day Blues’ and ‘Ocean’ about it, but predominantly it’s Kate’s banjo which sets the tone and somehow americanizes the old Wessex folk harmonising.  It takes a little more listening to come through, but come through it does.

Next up, The World Outside is in a Cupboard, which often is a good place for it to be.  Meantime there’s dates in September and more in November, when the album sees the light of the day.  I confidently predict another post around about then.

Rachael Dadd website
Rachael Dadd MySpace – where currently you’ll find something unexpectedly and fantastically Low-ish recorded with the ‘Missing Mountains’.
Whalebone Polly