Spooky spectral sounds spiral into saturation for this exquisite new chapter for Maz O’Connor. Love It Is A Killing Thing marks a momentous return.
GAGGING FOR THE FRONTIER
To say eagerly anticipated sounds always like so much hype, but gagging is neither a pretty word nor an attractive vision. So, to context: late to the temple of Maz O’Connor. Somehow I had passed her earlier work by, until gifted first dibs on her single, Once I Had A Sweetheart, November’s frontrunner for this release, then having to reconsider my past (in)actions. Sure, there was gain to be made from her back catalogue, but Sweetheart suggested a new frontier had been broached and, yes, look away, I have been gagging for this. And with good reason.
LIVING SONGS
Rather than revisit her backstory, this release, her first in four years, sees her celebrating becoming a mother with her most confident selection of songs yet, all crafty revisitations and reimagining of themes ancient and substantive. Trad. arr. in the truest sense, in that all the arrangements are meticulously crafted from the varied historical journeys taken by each song, and the evolutionary journeys undertaken, country to country, continent to continent. With her sometimes adding a new tune or some altered lyric, this is not so much old songs as living ones.
Recorded entirely live in the studio, she and her collaborators allow the material to shine, as the instruments sparkle to show it all off to the best advantage. The instruments? First and foremost, O’Connor’s voice, spinning effortlessly out, free of affection or artifice. Providing sensitive and sympathetic support are the fiddles, banjos, guitars and background voices of Anna Rheingans and Zak Hobbs, with O’Connor adding her own additional guitar accompaniment as well. Producer, Thomas Bibb, adds the bass that featured on that single, and the footstep percussion that is another occasional feature. The album’s mixer, Mark Lewis adds additional percussion, again for the single.
A GHOSTLY REBIRTH
It is the single that opens the disc, and if it was a joy back in the bleak of November, now, as Spring is fully unwinding, that joy is now greater still. O’Connor’s new melody gifts the old bones of the ballad with a ghostly rebirth. Rheingans offers a flickering banjo figure, with Hobbs providing the sort of delicate electric textures that his Grandad brought to early Fairport. A sumptuous package from any angle, with O’Connor’s vocal the icing on top, a frosty commentary bereft of any accent or any excess of emotion, a dispassionate dream of a version.
A Man Like You strips the already spare frame back further, picked guitar and banjo the sole scaffolding for this reworking of Young Hunting, the voice of Hobbs a spectral echo in the chorus. It strums up into a sputter, as it progresses, Rheingans, too, adding her voice to what is now almost more a chant. A bit of sly gender reassignation swallows the usual presumptions of this gaunt ballad, allowing it to be heard anew. Rheingans, now on fiddle, sweeps lithely about the words, and the promise of this utterly beguiling record is truly showing its worth.
ARCHETYPAL APPALACHIANA
Jenny Put The Kettle On, sounds and seems to be archetypal Appalachiana, with a tune that begs comparison with Froggy Went A’Courting. A simpler song, it smacks of post bath time and pre bedtime preparations, at chez O’Connor. That mood is maintained into an old staple of the tradition, Let No Man Steal Your Thyme, taken respectfully at a low smoulder, with little adornment, allowing the horror implicit in the punning wordplay to reveal itself. Yikes…..
Silver Dagger is no lighter nor more cheerful, a further banjo led song that tastes of hillbilly moonshine, or, more to the point, the damages wrought thereby. If you are a feeling a shiver rise up your spine, believe me, you are not alone. Just when you need it, a skip is built into the step of the song that follows, an entirely O’Connor written song. A lullaby, The Counting Song, it was written for her son, Patrick. Despite the expected and possibly intended joy, the call and echoed response carries a similar foreboding, and structure, to The Cuckoo Bird, in its many iterations. I want to hope it settles Patrick for the night, but I’m left awkwardly restless, scared to look out the window or under the bed.
COUP DE GRACE
I Am A Poor Girl must surely be a song from the perspective of a sticky end, it carrying all the trappings of a from the grave visitation, trudging the moors at night. Rheingans attaches a cobweb veneer of fiddle that is only just all there. The song that gives the album title, the verse continues: “Did you ever feel the pain, I’ll never be the same“, ending abruptly on that acapella phrase. I’m not sure I will be, either.
Rather than leaving you hanging there, O’Connor then inflicts one final coup de grace, with album highlight, Come And I Will Sing You. Over eight minutes of delicious repetition, this is a song I just cannot shake off, it lingering long after the record has finished. With the guitar work never more Liege and Lief-y, Rheingans gives it likewise the full Swarb, her fiddle gliding and glissanding gloriously. The tapping foot is all the propulsion required to cement the song for posterity. O’Connor sings it straight and true, a voice you want to hold and have in your heart.
You want a pithy summation? Will momentous do?
Maz O’Connor: Website