Annie Keating Hard Frost

Blabber’n’Smoke has long been a fan of Annie Keating’s passionate songs which sashay from blue collar rock to country soul with ease. Hard Frost was released a few months ago but with Keating embarking on an extensive UK tour this weekend it’s well time for us to lend an ear.

She opens the album with a twanged guitar introduction on Lies And Dynamite, a classic Keating number. It’s slow and moody with Keating’s voice sounding at times like Patti Smith on a song replete with vivid images of America which she imbues with a sinister touch. She maintains this tough, road tested soul survivor persona on Sunshine Parade which has sinewy guitar battling it out with synthesised strings on a smouldering song while Lovesick Blues is a gut bucket bluesy number with Keating wallowing in her post relationship mess. This is one of the songs from the album which Keating previewed on her most recent UK appearances and, live, she and her UK band ripped the song to shreds, rivalling The Blasters in their ferocity.

Aside from her street savvy songs, Keating has always revealed a more tender side on her albums and none more so than on Belly Of The Beast where she sounds quite vulnerable and almost childlike at times. Again she’s singing of lost love and its emotional hangover – “Heartbreak like a bullet” she sings – but after an almost Dylan like litany of metaphors she comes out as a survivor. A survivor, she reminds us on Wrong Guy’s Girl, who is also a travelling and romantic troubadour. Here, over a wonderfully bruised backing (think of the ragged Dylan songs on the Rolling Thunder tour), Keating delivers a sly travelogue which mentions places she has played which she has fallen in love with while also recounting amorous mishaps which occurred in some of them including the wonderful line “I’ve been chased out of Corfu for kissing the wrong guy’s girl.”

There’s much to admire here. Keepsakes And Heartbreaks is a delightfully frothy folky number which finds her, post divorce, pondering on what to do with her wedding ring while Feels Like Home has a sense of wintry comfort which echoes of Joni Mitchell in its bones. She closes the album with her rendition of The Police’s So Lonely, drastically altered to suit Keating’s style but this listener would have preferred to have heard another Keating song. It’s the only fly in this wonderful ointment.

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Tour dates:

1/9 – Ashcroft Arts Centre – Fareham, UK
2/9 – Little Rabbit Barn – Essex, UK
3/9 – Bob Harris “Picnic” House show & the Tap that night – Oxford, UK
5/9 – House Concert – Liverpool, UK (email info@anniekeating for info)
6/9 – The Atkinson – Southport, UK
7/9 – Glad Cafe – Glasgow, Scotland
8/9 – Biggar Corn Exchange – Biggar, Scotland
9/9 – Filey Americana – Filey, UK
10/9 – The Live Rooms – Saltaire, UK
12/9 – Kitchen Garden Café – Birmingham, UK
13/9 –What’s Cookin (Double bill w/Steady Habits) – London area, UK
14/9 – Chapel Arts Center (Sean duo opening) – Bath, UK
15/9 –September Songs Festival
16/9 – Eastwell Village Hall – Eastwell, UK
17/9 – The John Peel Centre –Stowmarket, UK

Laurie Styvers. Gemini Girl: The Complete Hush Recordings. High Moon Records

Gemini Girl is another handsome reissue package from High Moon Records which goes some way to rehabilitate, indeed revive, the late Laurie Styvers, a Texan who gravitated to London in the swinging sixties and who released two largely forgotten albums on the Chrysalis label in the early seventies. Although well reviewed at the time and awarded the accolade of “single of the week” by the then trendy Radio One with Beat The Reaper, the lead song of her first album, Styvers faded into obscurity, returning to the States and living what appears to have been a fairly satisfying life, untroubled by her failure to leave her mark in the music industry.

Very much in the Carole King/Dory Previn/Judee Sill/Laura Nyro camp of singer songwriters, Styvers was somewhat unique in that she recorded her two albums (Spilt Milk and The Colorado Kid) in England. An earlier brief spell in folk rock band Justine had brought her to the attention of Hush Productions, owned by Shel Talmy and Hugh Murphy and it was these tin pan alley guys who helmed both of the albums. To their credit they gave full rein to Styvers’ beguiling songs and hired some of the cream of UK session men to record the songs but the albums lacked the allure of the stellar names who popped up on any number of LA Canyon releases.

This collection consists of the two albums along with a generous helping of unreleased songs and alternate takes. It opens with Beat the Reaper, the first song on Spilt Milk which does invoke the carefree and innocent ways of her Laurel Canyon contemporaries before Styvers launches into the emotional depths of Imagine That The Lights Have Gone Out, a song slightly drowned by its sweeping strings and horns but packing a powerful punch. Styvers belies her youth (she was only 20 when she recorded this) with a set of songs which are emotionally intelligent, mature and socially aware. The title song, Gemini Girl, is an acute dissection of her own fairly priveledged status while the glorious Five Leaves Left (not related to Nick Drake) finds her juggling hippy days out on Hampstead Heath with the daily routine of getting the shopping in. She returns to this on Eat Your Cornflakes, a sweet pedal steel flavoured song which comes across as her version of the secret diary of a frustrated housewife.

In between recording these albums Styvers returned to America and spent time playing with a bunch of Colorado musicians in a loose limbed combo called Little Brown’s Electric Band. She also heard Carole King’s Tapestry and both were to inform the making of The Colorado Kid. That album opens with You Are My Inspiration, inspired surely by King’s album although there is more than a smidgeon of Laura Nyro to be heard also. Tapestry also looms large on the plaintive piano ballad Take Me In Your Arms Again and the yearning Take Good Care. Nyro comes to mind again on the very impressive There’s Still Time (Follow Your Heart) where Styvers is accompanied on vocals by the perfect trio of Dyan Birch, Frank Collins and Paddy McHugh (a trio who sang with Arrival and soon went on to form Kokomo). It’s topped however by the dramatic delivery of You Be The Tide, I’ll Be The Bay, a song which predates Kate Bush by several years. It’s simply gorgeous.

Beautifully packaged and with an extensive and informative booklet, Gemini Girl casts a spotlight on an artist who deserves to be much better known. Fans of Judee Sill, Laura Nyro and Carol King will surely love this.

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