Please help with my musical education!

Keleigh,

I've just discovered Jaymay, sample her MySpace.

Her album Autumn Fallin is really impressive, especially as she plays most of the instruments and produced it as well.



Denis

quote:

Originally posted by Keleigh:
Hi, i am a child of the 80s and so seemed to miss out on a lot of good, female vocalists (too busy with electronica!). I listen to Katie Melua, Norah Jones and Bic Runga a lot now to relax but would love to discover other good female vocalists. What would people recommend? Joni Mitchell??

Loreena McKennitt
Sarah McLachlan
Rickie Lee Jones
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Shawn Colvin
Emmylou Harris- her later period- poss too country for you during her early stuff
Patty Griffin
Carole King- you have to have at least one her discs in your collection - namely Tapestry
Eliza Gilkyson
Aretha Franklin- her Atlantic period
Joni Mitchell
Alison Krauss

These are a few but there are literally hundreds.

There are lots of great female vocalists around - especial ones who write original material - ewemon's already listed some and I'll add a few more. In Ewemon's list I think the pick of the artist he mentions is Mary Chapin Carpenter and her album Come On Come On is a gem, but she hasn't made a bad album IMO - though all the artists ewemon lists have cut great records.

Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day
Laura Cantrell - Not The Trembling Kind
Cara Dillon - Sweet Liberty
Martha Johnson (Martha & The Muffins) - This Is The Ice Age
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Lisa Knapp - Wild and Undaunted
Karine Polwart - Faultlines
Eddi Reader - Eddi Reader
Kate Rusby - Hourglass
Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - The Bairns or Cruel Sister
Kate Walsh - Tim's House
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Shirley Collins - Sweet England
Shirley Collins - False True Lovers
Shirley Collins - Folk Roots New Roots
Shirley Collins - Power Of The True Love Knot
Shirley Collins - Anthems In Eden
Shirley Collins - No Roses
Shirley Collins - Love Death & The Lady

Melanie (Safka) - The Good Book
Melanie (Safka) - Gather Me

However, the best record I have heard this century (probably) - of course we have had several HMHB albums and Scott Walker's superb The Drift, but they are not female - is by Basia Bulat and called Oh My Darling, here she is without her floppy hat



A few to contemplate

ATB Rotf

I would recommend...

...also

Both of Nymph's choices are BRILLIANT records.

I really should buy a turntable so I can play them!

Beth from Portishead is probably my favourite female vocalist these days - only another three months before their new album's out.

Hi ROTF,
I'm curious, having never heard her work. What is it that is so good about Basia Bulat? What style of music does she play?
Cheers,
Steve.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve O:
Hi ROTF,
I'm curious, having never heard her work. What is it that is so good about Basia Bulat? What style of music does she play?
Cheers,
Steve.

Hi Steve

In brief

A whole host of outstanding artists have recently broken through from Montreal, Ontario and Toronto. The best, IMHO, is Basia Bulat. Basia is a singer-songwriter from London, Ontario, who now lives in Toronto (home of the wonderful Martha and the Muffins). Basia recorded Oh My Darling, which was engineered and produced by Howard Bilerman at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal. Howard Bilerman produced Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Arcade Fire, but don’t hold that against him. Basia is not from the earnest female singer/songwriter school - this is music for music’s sake and it’s great. Recording her debut album in Arcade Fire’s studio means comparisons are unavoidable and you do get that 'what on earth is this?' feeling when you first hear Basia.

Put simply Oh My Darling is folk-rock album with some jazz overtones and some superb string orchestration and a touch of ragtime. Basia's vocals are viscous and full-bodied. Her rotating cast of players in her chamber-folk orchestra include brother Bobby on drums, Dave on viola, Holly on backing vocals, percussion and ukulele, Seo-Jin on violin, Sebastian on cello, Stephanie on piano and Jay on guitar.

True I’m often excited by great new music; but I believe this to be the best album I have heard in years. Obviously, HMHB are my favourite band and from the 80s onwards restored my faith in popular music, a genre that I believed was becoming forever lost amidst the dross of disco, new romantics and boy-bands. In the 90s some other bands came along to shake things up a bit and give popular music new life (most notably Garbage). The 00s seem to have found the resurgence of great popular music especially for somebody like me who likes the influence of folk music on today’s culture. So whereas, in the 80s Martha and the Muffins This Is The Ice Age stood out from the crowd, it was not nearly so easy for a record to stand head and shoulders above the rest in 2007. Basia’s Oh My Darling is the record that achieves this. I must have listened to it 100 times since I bought it and it is surely one the most played records in my collection.

Basia’s music and her performance is never pedestrian. There is always great attack in every part of every song. Every musician that contributes seems as if he or she really means it and believes that are participating in something special. However, this music is not self indulgent, it doesn’t sound like somebody singing from an experience of being put through the mill. It does not try to put across any message or explain how awful life is. It's pretty music, catchy and played with pace, rhythm and timing. The songs are short and there is no padding, no pyrotechnics (not that mind a bit of pyrotechnics) nor repetitions. When a song is done then it’s done.

The songs here are so unusually put together that they become almost addictive - the brief opening track Before I Knew is a case in point. Beginning with a simple ukulele, it incorporates handclaps and harmonies and is finished in just over a minute. The fact that it leads into the wondrous, percussion heavy standout of I Was A Daughter just makes it all the more listenable.

Then there's Bulat's voice - sometimes fragile and whispy, and at other times strong and passionate, she can sound heartbreaking on the samba arrangement of the aching Why Can't It Be Mine or urgent and imploring on the fantastic Snakes And Ladders. The latter in fact is possibly one of the tracks of 2007, mixing plinking piano chords and a haunting string section to create something quite beautiful.

Maybe Oh My Darling won't be for everyone - it's firmly in the cult bracket and it's difficult to see her breaking into the hit parade. Nonetheless, there's not a duff track on here. When the ukulele reappears on the closing track, A Secret, I want to play the album again.

The tracks are

Before I Knew
I Was A Daughter

Little Waltz

December

Snakes and Ladders

Oh, My Darling

Little One

Why Can't It Be Mine

The Pilgriming Vine

La-Da-Da

Birds Of Paradise

A Secret

These are reviewers quotes that I wholeheartedly endorse:

Snakes and Ladders - One of my favourite things about this album is the way the drums are played on songs like this. They hurtle at double-speed, ratatat-tat, chasing the singer breathless. So many female songwriters take-it-always-easy, languishing in slow piano chords and then the occasional strident bit. Here it's like the band (Basia, drums, strings) are throwing themselves down a hill, feet scarcely keeping up with their feelings, this close to tumbling head-over-heels into something. And indeed so it is: "It's the way we come undone / what a perfect accident / oh we danced around them all / like we didn't even notice / oh / at the way we'd come undone."

The Pilgriming Vine - One of the last songs recorded in the sessions, and I like to imagine the musicians sitting there despondent, nothing quite catching, Christmas lights twinkling, when in through the door troops a marching band - bass-drum, cymbal, flute, string section, a guy with a piano balanced on his open palm. And suddenly they know exactly where the song's headed, where it ought to be headed, the path that leads from the girl and her acoustic guitar, hopes in hand, to the moment at 2:55 when with her voice doubled-up we hear every trembling angle of what she's (we're all) waiting for: "Tell me I'm always your Only," she sings. Down by the maypole. If you go.

You can listen to Basia on MySpace (please click here).

The problem for Basia is how does she follow an album as good - I suppose the Beatles had the same problem with Sgt Pepper and Pink Floyd with Dark Side - both managed it, lets hope Basia does.

ATB Rotf

Natalie Merchant
Ani Difranco - not exactly "relaxing".
Eleanor McEvoy

My personel favs which span a few years

Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes - The Beekeeper

Kate Bush - anything from her esp, Never forever

Tracy Chapman - The Collection

Annie Lennox - Medusa

Alanis Morissette - Jagged little Pill

Oleta Adams - Circle of One

latest discovery - Susy Thomas into the morning - well worth a listen - great LIVE

Antony

Hi Keleigh,

Some excellent suggestions there, I have many of those suggested. In addition, I would not want to be without these;

Jennifer Warnes...The Hunter
Jewel...Spirit
Jane Tylor...Montpelier
Kathryn Williams...Little Black Numbers
Sarah McLachlan...Surfacing

I'd say the female singers especially the songwriters is what I listen to most and these are some of the best produced of my favourites.

I'm just about to order Basia Bulat's " Oh My Darling" Thanks to ROTF for that one, just had a listen, right up my street!

Useful thread, thanks.

Darren

I don't disagree with any of the above, but you might like to try singers from earlier times. You could be very pleasantly surprised. My youngest daughter is also a child of the 80's and she (and I) likes:
Julie London
Julie Christie
Peggy Lee
as well as more modern singers.
Ken

A great 1979/80 album from Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders : )
Singing is a natural ability of Chrissie Hynde, and with this raunchy band around her they really do Rock!

nymph

quote:

Originally posted by KenM:
I don't disagree with any of the above, but you might like to try singers from earlier times. You could be very pleasantly surprised. My youngest daughter is also a child of the 80's and she (and I) likes:
Julie London
Julie Christie
Peggy Lee
as well as more modern singers.
Ken

And Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark - both made great In Memphis albums.

Mary Black. She's a bit folky, but I don't normally like folk and I think her voice makes up for it. No Frontiers is my favourite album.

quote:

I'm just about to order Basia Bulat's " Oh My Darling" Thanks to ROTF for that one, just had a listen, right up my street!

You're very welcome - make sure you get the latest version with the extra track.

quote:

Originally posted by stevebrassett:
Mary Black. She's a bit folky, but I don't normally like folk and I think her voice makes up for it. No Frontiers is my favourite album.

Mary Black is superb and No Frontiers is my favourite album by her too - or is it Babes In The Wood?

Try 'White Chalk' by PJ Harvey. It's her latest record, and at the quieter end of her musical spectrum. It's harder to imagine a female artist more different to Katie Melua, but that is definitely no bad thing!

On the jazz side, I'd recommend Stacey Kent. There are so many great recommendations above it may be a bit overwhelming, but hey, the only way is up!

Nigel

The most definitive Blondie Album : )

Imogen Heap is seriously underrated. A female version of Patrick Wolf, with perhaps more pop overtones. She has a great voice, and is a talented songwriter.

Otherwise my fav would have to be PJ Harvey, especially if you like rock/alternative music.

Ryan

quote:

The most definitive Blondie Album

Surely 'most definitive' is a double thingy. It's either definitive or it's not. Which it is of course. While in the late 70's / early 80's vibe, mention must go to the first Yazoo album, which is really great.

Nigel

I love this album! : )

quote:

Originally posted by hungryhalibut:

quote:

The most definitive Blondie Album

Surely 'most definitive' is a double thingy. It's either definitive or it's not. Which it is of course. While in the late 70's / early 80's vibe, mention must go to the first Yazoo album, which is really great.
Nigel

But it's mostly more definitiver than the others! ; )

Suzanne Vega's first two albums:


and her most recent:



James