Two and a half years after her excellent ‘Tales of Light & Darkness’ album, acclaimed UK singer/songwriter returns with a album full of great musicians and memorable songs.
‘Meanwhile…’ is a substantial and mature album that is packed with well written and serious songs that are obviously influenced by Angie’s travels around the world and her own life experiences.
She has a distinct sound that mixes English and Americana influences, and it’s easy to pick out elements of both over the course of the twelve songs – the Americana elements are ever present in the instrumentation, but the arrangements use these instruments in a slightly different ways to comparable albums from North American artists giving Angie a genuinely unique sound.
The album is dominated by Angie’s acoustic guitar, but her strong band add viola, mandolin, lap steel, bass, percussion and more; two guest musicians add a huge amount to the album with legendary BJ Cole providing beautiful pedal steel, and Alan Gregson (Cornershop) adds Hammond as well a producing the twelve track collection.
Angie mixes country, blues and folk with equal parts of tenderness and edge; the songs were written while living on a forest edge in rural France and have echoes of the remote landscape in amongst the symbolism direct references in her lyrics.
The songs are all mature, thoughtful pieces that stand up well as songs on their own as well as part of a whole album, ‘The Fiery Lake’ is based on an old Russian folk tale, ‘Hey Lazarus!’ is a biblical parable turned into a great lyric, and the final track ‘Weeping Wood’ is an immense, eight minute plus epic song that captures the spirit, power and feel of the album perfectly.
Angie is a strong singer and guitarist, and the songs are all full of strong melodies and thoughtful arrangements, but above all this it’s obvious that she’s an artist who takes song writing very seriously, and this disc shows the art of the creative singer/songwriter at their very best.
Track listing
1 On the Eve
2 The Fiery Lake
3 Slip Away from me
4 Hunting the Wolf
5 If I Was
6 Deep Blue Sea
7 Nightsong
8 After the Lights of Gone
9 Hey Lazarus!
10 I Hear that Locomotive
11 Ile d'Yeu (Smugglers' Song)
12 Weeping Wood
