One of the great new voices of her generation, ‘Sleeper Train’ is a haunting, folky paean fit for Judee Sill that is brought up to date with its echoey electric guitar. Marina’s self-made new video accompanying the single transports you to the balmy beaches of West Marin in California.
Marina Allen glides on angelic highs, surfing the husky deep, writing songs that carry notes from other realms. These are kitchen table tales about love and fear, the capturing of the wild heart, sketching the breaking of dawn, bringing real life back to life.
‘Candlepower’ is so confident and crystal clear, so full of masterfully crafted songs and purely emotive performances, that you feel like you’ve loved it all before as it twists and turns. A moving, hard-to-believe balancing act that crosses genres and invariably flows unapologetically, succinctly, and spine-tinglingly to a glorious conclusion. Amid the euphoria, you hear rhymes and end rhythms, rumours and fact. Tales of the unexpected.
The stuff of legend for a voice that surfs many musical tangents, hovers, and persists, that stings with honesty; morphing from Karen Carpenter’s gentle reverence to Laura Nyro’s soulful grit, moving through the phases like some possessed Dada performance artist before throwing in a melody from Joni at her jazziest or from the close harmonies of the lamented Roches when they flipped out with Robert Fripp.
‘Candlepower’ is a juxtaposition of melodies, an achingly beautiful set of songs set against the clank of the mundane world, a beguiling commentary on the everyday and everywhere.
FIRE RECORDS
