Sharron Kraus - Beautiful Twisted

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 28 / 4 / 2002

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Review

Never was an album more aptly titled. Sharron Kraus has been gifted with a voice so pure, so fragile that on the first few plays of this outstanding album it disguises the fact that some of her lyrics deal with very dark subjects indeed. 'Beautiful Twisted' sums it up perfectly. I really didn’t know that music like this was being made any more and I was certainly not aware that it was being released. This music can be favourably compared to the music made 30 odd years ago by the likes of Anne Briggs, who in turn was similarly making music which had its roots in ancient folk music from hundreds of years back. If you admired the work of Briggs when it was first released or are one of the new converts as a result of her work recently being re-released, then stop reading and just buy this album. The chances are that you’ll be just as impressed. A little background information about Sharron would be appropriate before going into details about the music she creates so well. Sharron took up music full time three years ago, after completing her Doctorate in Philosophy at Oxford University. She was percussionist with Captain Swing, a world folk band, for two years and spent a year as vocalist and keyboard player creating gothic sounds with Obsidian. More recently Sharron has created electronic music with The Waiting Room and playing acoustic based music with the Irish-American country-folk band Belshaw. Apart from obvious influences like Anne Briggs, Martin Carthy and Shirley Collins, Sharron is also influenced by contemporary artists like The Violent Femmes and Tom Waits. So to the music. One of the main instruments used on these eleven original songs is the 5-string banjo. Sharron usually plays this, although Ron Guensche (who also adds bass, lap steel guitar and mandolin to the other tracks) plays the banjo on the closing track, ‘Song Of The Unfree’. Special mention should be made of the banjo playing, even though it is not featured on all of the tracks, as this is the only album I’ve heard where the banjo sounds so melancholic. Normally an instrument that evokes a happy sound for the most part (to these ears at least), it really is a revelation in the way in which it is played here to create the appropriate atmosphere. From the opening lines on the first track, ‘The Peacock’s Wing’, Sharron’s vocals captivate the listener. They are crystal clear and have a fragile beauty. Once the initial surprise and pleasure at hearing vocals of a quality which you had thought had long since gone, never to return, has passed, you realise that the instruments used, aside from the banjo, such as the fiddle, whistle and upright bass play a great part in creating the atmosphere and add different tones. Lyrically, the songs cover dark subjects. Floods, madness and incest to name just a few. ‘The Family Tradition’, for example, places Sharron’s beautiful vocals over an eerie backing of just banjo and fiddle, and tells of a young girl sitting in her grandmother’s chair and being told that she will meet a man who will “love you like I love you”. She is also told that she will go on to have children of her own and that she will pass on the family tradition of wearing the lace brought from her ancestors’ homeland for luck and protection. Not much to warrant the unearthly backing then. No, not until the last couple of verses. It then transpires that, “ All around her bed at night, The ghosts do stir and whisper, You are of us your turn has come, We are your blood little sister”. The song ends with the little girl, now grown up, standing at the altar accepting her fate of having children and a working life “wishing she loved her husband”. The following track, ‘Twins’, is even more harrowing. “I slept with a man, who was my mother’s son”. How many tracks concerning incest would you want to listen to more than once? Well, here’s one. Again, it’s the purity in Sharron’s vocals and the atmospheric music that draws the listener in and her way with a lyric makes you picture the stories in your head. Even if it is a place where you don’t particularly want to go. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve heard a record so dark and chilling, yet so beautiful and I guess that the next time I hear such an atmospheric album will be Sharron’s next release.

Track Listing:-

1 The Peacocks Wing
2 The Rivers Daughter
3 Moonbathing
4 The Family Tradition
5 Twins
6 Cold Hearted Devil
7 Death Jig
8 The Wrong Man
9 Godstow
10 Beautiful Twisted
11 Song Of The Unfree