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Laila Biali
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Reviews (2)
The guardian
d. 1. July 2022
By
By
Jude Rogers
d. 1. July 2022
"Folk album of the month" - "Ghost Story is Maddie's powerful, immediate 10-track debut (you can imagine her singing its songs on festival stages, as if early-career Sharon Van Etten had been diverted on to an ancient, rougher road). The mood throughout evokes the dimly lit intimacy of early 2000s albums by Diane Cluck, Emilíana Torrini and Nina Nastasia, with added warmth. Tunes are often carried by banjo or guitar, supported by low strings, the percussive shudder of bones, or on Scottish ballad Ca' the Yowes, a synthesiser providing a strangely fitting, scratchy counterpoint. Maddie's young, welcoming voice also makes her an accessible storyteller. This often gives a surprisingly unnerving quality to songs that already hang heavy with horror, something she plays with ... Her fantastic, original lyrics unsettle you, too ... This album is constantly arresting, emotional and thrilling".
Folk radio UK
d. 8. July 2022
By
By
Billy Rough
d. 8. July 2022
"Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter Fern Maddie['s] debut is an extraordinary tour de force ... At times it is fascinatingly difficult to tell original songs from traditional ones demonstrating Maddie's innate engagement and affinity with folk history ... Maddie lives deep in the mountains of Central Vermont in a "tiny cottage in the woods, where she tends goats, dogs, and feral gardens" ... It's here, deep in the woods, that Maddie experiments with her various influences and instruments; Old-Time string band music to 60s and 70s British folk provide rich roots here, whilst dark country, folk-rock and the trad renaissance all make self-confessed appearances in Maddie's sound too ... Fern Maddie's debut is strangely timeless but thoroughly topical, too, with nods to contemporary politics and social history, all imbued with an eclectic yet evocatively atmospheric sound; Ghost Story is an astonishingly confident and accomplished debut".