Little Sparrow - Just 3 EP

  by John Clarkson

published: 24 / 8 / 2018

Label: Little Sparrow
Format: Download

intro

Thought-provoking and haunting EP and first release in four years from Little Sparrow, the project of Manchester-based singer-songwriter Katie Ware

It has been over four years since Little Sparrow, the project of Cambridgeshire-born but for many years Manchester-based singer-songwriter Katie Ware, released its debut album, the captivating and beautiful ‘Wishing Tree’. In the time since then Ware has taken time out from making music to bring up her young family, but not before playing a personally revelatory gig in 2016 at the Kendal Calling festival. That festival appearance found her teaming up with composer and musician Robin Dewhurst, and the pair being encouraged along with Ware’s regular cellist Sarah Dale by its organisers to create and record their own version of Madness’s 1980 single ‘Baggy Trousers’ as well as, in what has since been seen as one of Kendal Calling’s stand-out moments, to play it live. Ware, Dewhurst and Dale have now reprised that recording of ‘Baggy Trousers’ as the opening track on Little Sparrow’s new EP ‘Just 3’ which also introduces two Little Sparrow originals. Great covers all build on from the originals, and Little Sparrow’s ‘Baggy Trousers’ certainly does that. The upbeat, brassy pop of Madness’s original is stripped down to something much more stark and meditative in which every note counts for a huge amount as Dewhurst’s rippling, sparse piano and Dale’s humming cello combine with a fluttering acoustic guitar line from Ware. Lyrically it has been pared down as well, Ware’s ethereal vocal removing some verses. While Madness’s version reflected on our school days being better than they seemed at the time, Ware takes a different, more bittersweet approach, putting emphasis on the line “trying different ways to make a difference to the day” and saying something equally relevant about the human condition and how from childhood onwards we often found ourselves trapped in monotony. ‘Tender’, the first of Ware's own compositions, pushes Dewhurst’s softly chiming piano to the fore. A deeply personal number written at a sad and difficult time in Ware’s life, it might be interpreted with its reflective lyrics (“I sit and wait for the end of my days/ng Wondering why I wasn’t taken this way”) as being about death, and the thought that some of us have when someone has died young, as we try to make sense of the incomprehensible, of why they have died instead of us. The last track ‘Dry Your Eyes’ was written by Ware as she was coming out of a period of depression, but with its rising piano and slowly soaring vocals is about finding the strength to carry on and ends the EP on a note of hope. A thought-provoking and haunting return from Ware and Little Sparrow which promises much for a long-awaited second album, which will hopefully come out next year.

Track Listing:-

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