What Are You Listening To?

[Ruby]

Unearthed a real blast from the past – two records I haven’t listened to in aeons. Lesley Rae Dowling’s eponymously titled debut album and her fourth, Split. 




 
SA’s answer to Kate Bush, I suppose you might say. I had no idea she’d released eight albums in total before bowing out of the biz in 2004. She always had a love/hate relationship with the industry – didn’t like live performances and didn’t like the machine. She also wouldn’t take her career to the international stage in the early days as doing so would have meant living abroad for six months of the year (due to cultural boycotts) and she’d have had to leave her family. Fortunately for her, she had the luxury of being able to retreat to her winelands farm when irked by all things commercial which I’m sure must have helped to minimize the pain!

She wrote excellent lyrics and some quite gorgeous songs, now that I’m listening again – also had an interesting voice with a fairly broad range and a most distinctive deep alto. She had production and support from some big names (to us) Jonathan Butler, Tully McCully, and had some well-known musos playing with her too; piano is hers but on Split, for example, she had Cedric Sampson, Richard Pickett and Tully McCully on percussion, McCully on bass and rhythm, very nice sax by Gary Horne and Alan Faull, of Falling Mirror on guitar.

There are pretty much no decent YT clips but both albums are available on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/3jafDOsH8YXAfUjelyTHdv and Deezer (except they’ve muddled up the final few tracks on Split??) … https://www.deezer.com/en/album/2466541

The YT tracks are all cut short so not posting them. I like this, in particular, today – “The Raven” … https://www.deezer.com/en/track/10501923

“The Spaniard” may be her best known song … https://www.deezer.com/en/track/10501921

And this is “1917” or “Anastasia”, from Split – her comment on, or homage to a subject that has always fascinated me – https://www.deezer.com/us/track/25897751