tue 10/12/2024

Josienne Clarke, Green Note review - world-class melancholia hits its mark | reviews, news & interviews

Josienne Clarke, Green Note review - world-class melancholia hits its mark

Josienne Clarke, Green Note review - world-class melancholia hits its mark

Stripped to the bone: the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner returns

Picture credit: @mralecbowman

It’s been a period of upheaval and change for singer-songwriter, and compelling interpreter of traditional ballads, Josienne Clarke. These days she’s a Rough Trade artist, now sailing solo seas away from her long-time musical partner, producer and arranger Ben Walker.

Together between 2010 and last year, they released two digital albums, Our Light is Gone and The Seas are Deep, three EPs and four exquisite CD/vinyl releases in 2013’s Fire & Fortune, the following year’s Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour, 2016’s Overnight and the final Seedlings All last year, the latter the first to be comprised entirely of her own songs.

There have been stints as an actor/singer at The National Theatre, at the behest of Cerys Matthews, in its revival of Our Country’s Good at the Olivier, and since then she’s collaborated with jazz pianist Kit Downes, and with London-based Scottish singer songwriter Samantha Whates as PicaPica, whose debut, Together & Apart, appeared on Rough Trade earlier this year. She’s recently toured with Richard Thompson and Robert Plant, and with Walker shared two BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nominations, but at this sold-out Green Note gig she is alone, solo, on her ownsome – and then some, previewing new songs from a yet-to-be titled debut solo album, including the starkly beautiful, delicate yet indomitable single, Things I Didn’t Need, released in April.

Her set focuses on the new - some of these songs are written-last-week brand new, with no title, but packed with a long emotional reach. Opening with the recent single, and proceeding through the likes of "Drawing a Line", "Leaving London" and "Never Lie", each and together they chart an inner narrative, with Clarke switching between acoustic and electric guitar. "It's too early in the set for jaded feminist songs," she says at one point, but it's not because they're not really songs with placards but a gunpowder mix of confession, absolution, concision and dismissal. They just might be the best break-up songs since Blood on the Tracks - big claims, but listen to the songs. 

Lyrically, they're not so much about heartbreak as about knowledge, and that is always compelling. There is no one to match her in that regard, perhaps in any genre. Musically, the paring is to the bone. Some pieces are shorn of all but verse, chorus, and basic melody, all wrapped up on a minute and a half of great music, like an old Buddy Holly single. Shorn of ornamentation, they're the bride stripped bare to reveal stark realities beneath. Dry and funny between songs, she's intense, concise and knowing within them. She could be playing the likes of "Season & Time" or "Unbound" to thousands, tens of thousands, not only the hundred-odd lucky ones crammed into the long room of the Green Note, soaking it all in with the collective body heat. These are songs of insight and passion that don't come along often; catch them if you can. The album  is due in the autumn. For Clarke's songs of fruitful loss, that is the perfect season.

Watch Josienne Clarke's video for Things I Didn't Need.

@CummingTim

Lyrically, they're not so much about heartbreak as about knowledge, and that is always compelling

rating

Editor Rating: 
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)

Share this article

Add comment

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters