A woman of beauty, a woman of pain

The journey continues...

The House Carpenter's Daughter (2003)

This is slightly different from what has come before...

1. Sally Ann
A very violin heavy, langourous track with a nice woozy feel to it - even if doesn't really go anywhere.

2. Which Side Are You On?
This is a 1931 track by US activist Florence Reece, which we've nominally already met when Billy Bragg covered it - but this is somewhat closer to the feel Florence was going for, complete with banjos. I quite like it (and it suits a softer voice than Billy's), but she's certainly not going for the commercial look here.

3. Crazy Man Michael
This is a Fairport Convention track, with some more nice violins - it's nice enough, but there's certainly not enough content to fill up 5:13. We definitely feel like we're round the camp fire here, with more noodling than structure.

4. Diver Boy
Yet another nice enough song without a huge amount of content - and I seem to recall this is my biggest problem with this album. For someone who's previously produced albums with plenty of meaningful lyrical content, there's just nothing like that here.

5. Weeping Pilgrim
This is very Joan Baez-ish and I quite like it.

6. Soldier, Soldier
This is a very traditional US folk song - it's well done, but it also feels very camp fire noodly with some very growly backing vocals.

7. Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow
More banjos - yee-ha!

8. House Carpenter
Fine - but doesn't really stand out.

9. Owensboro
We're back in Joan Baez land here - her voice suits the style nicely. I like this one. 

10. Down On Penny's Farm
This is very square dance-y - not really my sort of thing.

11. Poor Wayfaring Stranger
And back to sounding like JB - I don't even hate the banjos on this.

It's all skilfully done and would be great if you caught it live in an intimate setting so there's nothing really wrong with any of this, if that's what you're looking for - but after Motherland, this was not what I was looking for. I actually think it's nice to have some examples on the playlist though to document her journey, although there's going to be a few more musical diversions to come that I might not be so keen to keep a record of. But in this case I'm going for "Sally Ann", "Which Side Are You On?", "Weeping Pilgrim" and "Owensboro" - I'm definitely more of a fan of the Joan Baez sound than the square dance.

Wikipedia tells us it's an acoustic album and a mixture of contemporary folk covers and (mostly) traditional songs and it was produced by Natalie and released on her own record label. Critically, the reviews were pretty average and commercially, it didn't exactly set the world alight, getting to #124 in Australia. There's actually remarkably little about the album on the internet but I did find this amusingly dated BBC review - it's hard to remember that all of the internet used to look that (or worse). 

discogs.com tells us it's a relatively rare or unwanted album with only eight copies available, with prices ranging from 6 to 31 pounds for a decent version (only on CD), with no obvious reason for the variation in prices. This is a decent enough US folk album which sounds beautiful in places and like they had a load of fun making, although I think that also contributed to it seeming somewhat unstructured. I certainly didn't hate it but it's not an album I was particularly looking for Natalie to make.

Motherland - my favourite
Leave Your Sleep - a visit to the library