mellow and dandy:
Rachel Appleton
Ruby Lipps
Rachel Appleton is from Bolton, Lancs. She has a beautiful and sensual voice and she writes nice songs. With a help of her friend Alec Martin, she slowly gathers songs for her first album.
Songwriting (lyrics particularly) is very stylish. Nobody's Half is a beautiful folk song done in style of The Sundays. Beautiful Day and Into The Blue are much more introspective and esoteric, but preserve the folky feeling. If I would have to place Rachel's voice somewhere it'd be somewhere between Stivie Nicks and the singer of The Sundays. Something like Melody form Fruit Sandal, who we met in the last issue, but a little more harsh.
Alec Martin as a friend and producer underlines the mellowness and adds a certain psychodelic tincture to Rachel's sound. Evertyhing's recorded in an obviously improvised studio. Although all songs sound interesting and cozy, especially , they will sound even better with some more advanced audio technology in the studio.
Ruby Lipps is Rachel Appleton's alter-ego delivers her song Barely Sane in hi-fi. Production works perfectly, but it is not produced by Alec Martin. Delayed psychodelic accousic wall of guitars is replaced by a duo of sharp electric guitars. It'll be interesting to hear what Alec Martin would do with this song.
The career of Rachel Appleton is a begining of a great adventure, like Lou Reed would say.