Sharron
Kraus The Woody Nightshade SAAH063 CD / LP + Download / MP3 Release Date: November
2, 2010
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Sharron Kraus - voice,
acoustic guitar with: Michael
Tanner - guitar and
bowed dulcimer loops
Nick Palmer - nylon-stringed
guitar, bouzouki and autoharp
Mark Wilden - drums
Christophe Albertijn - electric
guitar, lap steel and bass
Vincent de Roguin - analog
circuitry
Nancy Wallace, Susanna Starling, Clare Button - backing
vocals
Track Listing: Nothing
- Two Brothers - Heaviness of Heart - Evergreen Sisters - Once - Story
- The Woody Nightshade - Teacher - Rejoice in Love - Traveller Between
the Worlds
"British singer and
musician Sharron Kraus has firmly established herself as a genuine
heiress to the UK folk ancestry of Shirley Collins, Lal Waterson,
or Maddy Prior…performing with a sparkling clear voice that can
sound as ancient and elemental as rain, stone, or soil."
- Matthew Murphy, Pitchfork
Sharron Kraus is
a UK-based singer, musician and songwriter whose craft defiantly recasts
yet tenderly cherishes the folk traditions of England and Appalachia.
Kraus summons a sound imbued in darkness yet is somehow enveloped in
an aura shimmering with heavenly luminescence; her songs tell intricate
tales of rootless souls, dark secrets and earthly joys, carried high
by an astonishing and inimitable voice of bell-clear sonority. With
a tableau of critically-acclaimed albums, collaborations and projects
across the past decade, Kraus has forged a musical path bewtiched
by the dark side of folk music and its traditions while lifting its
veil to the sunlight of modern times. The
Woody Nightshade is the newest entry into Kraus' canon, a body
of work that is her finest and most ambitious to date - and, notably,
the least overtly "folky" of the bunch.
The Woody Nightshade takes an amble down a slightly different
route along Sharron Kraus' musical path. Reminiscent of the expanded
instrumentation and compositional arrangements found on The Fox's
Wedding (released on David Tibet/Current 93's Durtro/Jnana
label, 2008), gone are the traditional folk tools of the trade, such
as the familiar use of banjo and fiddles, in favor of drums, electric
guitar and bass. While that may sound as though Kraus has "gone electric",
she uses this foray into broader instrumentation as texture and color,
wrapping coarse velvet and splashing subtle earth tones over her songs.
Kraus's signature has always been her distinctive vocals, and her idiosyncratic
siren sound is in top form throughout The Woody Nightshade.
As a first, Kraus is joined alternately by a trio of singers, providing
harmony on some tunes and dissonance on others, a turn that furthers
the textured qualities and inherent duality in her musical vision. The
result is a much more folk-inspired album than folk-saturated, and although
a feeling of claustrophobia seems to permeate throughout The Woody
Nightshade, shining moments of serenity are present to ease
the foreboding tension. Timely and timeless, The Woody Nightshade
is a triumph by one of the most original and innovative artists presiding
over today's new folk idiom.
*Download
artist biography
*Sharron Kraus' YouTube
channel
(includes videos for "In the Middle of Summer", "Twins",
"Thrice Toss These Oaken Ashes")
*Sharron Kraus has appeared in Pitchfork, The Wire, Rolling
Stone, Uncut, Sound Projector, Dirty Linen, Arthur Magazine, Ptolemaic
Terrascope, New Folk Sounds, Pop Matters and many more
*Kraus is featured prominently alongside Alasdair Roberts in
the forthcoming book Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid, Psych
and Experimental Folk, representing the "reinvention of radical
British folk".
*Interviewed on BBC Radio 3 for 'A Place Called England'
discussing the future of English folk music.
*Collaborations & partnerships: Christian Kiefer (The Black
Dove, Tompkins Square 2006); Meg Baird and Helena
Espvall (Espers), Leaves From Off The Tree (Bo' Weavil;
re-released in 2010); Tau Emerald (with Tara Burke/Fursaxa);
Rusalnaia (with Ex-Reverie's Gillian Chadwick); performed
with Irish free-folk collective United Bible Studies and alongside
Trembling Bells' Alex Neilson; gathered an ensemble cast of folk
singers on Right Wantonly A-Mumming (Bo' Weavil, 2007)
for a collection of seasonal songs.
*RIYL: Sandy Denny, Anne Briggs, Vashti Bunyan, Espers, Marissa Nadler,
Alela Diane, Fern Knight BUY
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Sharron
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