KIM LOWINGS AND THE GREENWOOD - Wild & Wicked Youth
Private Label
The third full-length album release by Kim Lowings and her Greenwood companions is another collection of original folkloric songs and mainly traditionally sourced material reworked in their now very assuredly able and catchily contemporary style.
With Kim (vocals, Appalachian and stick dulcimers, piano) are regular verdant glade folk Andrew Lowings (guitar, bouzouki, bodhrán, backing vocals), Dave Sutherland (double bass, backing vocals) and Tim Rogers (cajon, drums, percussion) with guests providing melodeon (Lewis Jones) and violin (Shannon Johnson, Ami Oprenova) on some tracks.
The compelling centrepiece is Kim’s enchantingly rich, warm and mellifluous voice set amidst precisely polished and adroitly accessible backing arrangements that draw richly on our local folk roots suffused with rock, indie and pop influenced music including a light leavening of Americana. Sounds a commercially winsome formula? Their upward festival trajectory since their inception in 2011 certainly suggests so.
Charmingly spun love songs, classic and original, tell of courting, faithfulness, partings, severance and murder with theft as the motif of Oyster Girl and penultimate piece The Newry Highwayman (source of that title incidentally). Central hinge piece, an original song with solo piano, Firestone is an astute piece of placement. Soulfully contemplative in feel, poignantly poetic and richly metaphorical, this pared back presentation (as with parting shot Fly Away) showcases another sophisticated facet of Kim’s abilities and offers a useful touchstone for further development.
This amply provides further evidence of the considerable potential this group has both for a famed position in the contemporary folk firmament and, given the right opportunities, wider promotional, even mainstream pop potential.
www.kimlowings.com
Kevin T. Ward
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