| Kirsty McGee - No5 |  It all started with a live recording back in October last year. Well, it actually began years before, when both Kirsty McGee and I were freelancing at Citylife (you know, back in those halcyon days when Manchester had a proper listings magazine like London’s Time Out) and she was beginning to write songs which she performed at small venues around the city. I went at her invitation to one of those early gigs with some trepidation; after all, I’d heard enough female singer-songwriters by then to know that it wasn’t really my thing.
However, what I heard that night was a writer and performer of rare talent, who might well be exploring the well-worn landscape of what June Tabor laconically termed ‘love-gone-wrong’, but in songs which were melodic and genuinely original.
I’ve taken an interest in her musical career ever since, through the saga of records which either never quite got released or were inadequately promoted, the fateful meeting with partner Mat Martin at Sidmouth Festival and the foundation of Hobopop (through which McGee now self-releases her CDs and promotes her gigs).
McGee (ably supported by the indefatigable multi-instrumentalist Martin, Christopher Cundy on saxello and bass clarinet, James Steel on electric guitar, Gabriel Minnikin on backing vocals and Clive Mellor on harmonica) recorded No 5 - so named because it follows her fourth studio recording, 2008’s The Kansas Sessions - live in a single take with no overdubs before an invited and very appreciative audience at Contact in Manchester.
It’s the first album to feature McGee’s full band The Hobopop Collective and comprises material from The Kansas Sessions, new songs and a revised version of Bliss from her 2002 debut, the BBC Radio2 Folk Award-nominated Honeysuckle. Fifteen songs were laid down that night under the technical supervision of Barkley McKay and Mat Martin (to whom full marks for the sound quality, frequently problematic on a live recording) and, if the nine which make it to No 5 are the slower, downbeat, sensual numbers, they’re what McGee, with that voice like honey dripping from a razor, does superlatively.
Unusually for a live recording, the between-song chat has been edited out - a wise decision, because this can so easily pall after two or three hearings. The band treatment of the songs adds depth and texture even to those familiar from The Kansas Sessions and Cundy’s delicate, empathetic playing on Bliss is just, well, bliss.
Although I’ve practically given up predicting her breakthrough to the realms inhabited by the likes of Kathryn Williams and Karine Polwart and once suggested (paraphrasing David Byrne on Richard Thompson) that it ‘served her right for being so good’, Kirsty McGee is one of the most significant singer-songwriters currently working on the folk/acoustic scene whom most people seem never to have encountered.
Try to catch her on the forthcoming promotional tour. She played Celtic Connections earlier this month and No 5 is officially launched at (where else) Contact on 27th February, following which there’s a punishing schedule which doesn’t finish until May. For dates in the northwest region see this website’s gig listings or www.kirstymcgee.com.
- Dave Tuxford |
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