Kathleen Edwards
For those Americana/Alt-country fans amongst my readership, I have to just quickly say that Kathleen Edwards' second album, Back to Me came out last week, and it's a fucking corker.
I know this isn't supposed to be a music blog, so I'll shut up about this shortly, but if you're a fan of Hayden - and I know quite a few of you are judging by the response to my post on him a while back - then give Ms. Edwards a spin. She's gained a certain level of notoriety in Canada and to some extent in the States, but is largely unheard this side of the large wet bit. This album's a little less depress-o than her first album, Failer, but just as smartly small-town feminist (and I know she's from Ottawa, but you know what I mean*) in her lyrics about relationships [From 'Copied Keys', a song about moving away from her home-town to that of her new husband: 'This is not my town and it will never be/ This is our apartment filled with your things/ This is your life; I get copied keys'. It doesn't express a rejection of the move, but does acknowledge that she is the one that had to make the change, like every other woman in a million other different scenarios] and as authentically expressive of the thousand minor disappointments of not-quite-mid-adulthood as the last. I'd say she's like a female Neil Young, but that would measure her in terms of how much she's like some guy, when she's just great all by herself without any comparisons, as far as I'm concerned.
*But if you don't, I'm talking about that admirable, effortless, self-discovered DIY feminism that seems to just ooze from small-town divorcees and the like. You know who I'm talking about. She's the one who organised the campaign to save the local hospital, or is the secretary-treasurer of the local labour council, or has one shoulder that is markedly larger than the other because she's been waitressing for twenty years. And she is the one that is going to lead the feminist revolution, even though she doesn't have a fucking clue whatever the hell a 'patriarchy' is.
I know this isn't supposed to be a music blog, so I'll shut up about this shortly, but if you're a fan of Hayden - and I know quite a few of you are judging by the response to my post on him a while back - then give Ms. Edwards a spin. She's gained a certain level of notoriety in Canada and to some extent in the States, but is largely unheard this side of the large wet bit. This album's a little less depress-o than her first album, Failer, but just as smartly small-town feminist (and I know she's from Ottawa, but you know what I mean*) in her lyrics about relationships [From 'Copied Keys', a song about moving away from her home-town to that of her new husband: 'This is not my town and it will never be/ This is our apartment filled with your things/ This is your life; I get copied keys'. It doesn't express a rejection of the move, but does acknowledge that she is the one that had to make the change, like every other woman in a million other different scenarios] and as authentically expressive of the thousand minor disappointments of not-quite-mid-adulthood as the last. I'd say she's like a female Neil Young, but that would measure her in terms of how much she's like some guy, when she's just great all by herself without any comparisons, as far as I'm concerned.
*But if you don't, I'm talking about that admirable, effortless, self-discovered DIY feminism that seems to just ooze from small-town divorcees and the like. You know who I'm talking about. She's the one who organised the campaign to save the local hospital, or is the secretary-treasurer of the local labour council, or has one shoulder that is markedly larger than the other because she's been waitressing for twenty years. And she is the one that is going to lead the feminist revolution, even though she doesn't have a fucking clue whatever the hell a 'patriarchy' is.
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