Tuesday 29 October 2013

Red Shoes review

Apologies all for the lack of recent posts, my computer had a brief moment of crazy but seems to be under control again now.

This week I will be reviewing a couple of folk bands and I will be doing a compare and contrast of Ange Hardy’s ‘Bare Foot Folk’ with her earlier album release ‘Windmills and Wishes’.

My first entry though is Red Shoes and their album release ‘All The Good Friends’

The duo already have already had a fair stretch on the folk scene with their debut album ‘Ring Around The Land’ and have now returned with this new release.

The album kick starts with a song called ‘Red Coat Ride’ which is an anti-hunting theme that cleverly uses strong percussion along with confident booming vocals and guitar. To me the percussion is a particularly nice touch as it ‘clomps’ along almost like the sound of hooves during horse riding.
The vocals of Carolyn Evans are very forcefully, pushing the message and story of the songs to you in a way gets you to listen carefully and grabs your attention. That isn’t to say her vocals can’t be soft though as the soothing song ‘Hidden Name’ and ‘River Rea’ then shows us very early on.
As for Mark Evans we get his acoustic abilities featuring behind in every song acting as the perfect counterpart to Carolyn. Their musical matching is shown particularly well in ‘Sunday Afternoon’ and the foot tapping ‘Swansong’ (Also has brilliant backing vocals).

The big sell for this band is the feeling that is portrayed through the music, ‘Blackberry Way’ is arranged both musically and vocally in such a way that you have to notice it. For Red Shoes there is no such thing as background music, they will always be the centre of attention when playing or being played.

DFTBA

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