Kathryn Calder - Are You My Mother?

  by Andy Cassidy

published: 12 / 9 / 2011

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Review

Having read that the album was mainly inspired by the time Kathryn Calder spent nursing her terminally ill mother, I was slightly apprehensive coming to 'Are You My Mother?' Mainly recorded in “Kathryn’s mom’s living room” in British Columbia, the ten songs have a distinctly homely feel to them but are, in places, let down by poor arrangements and production. Opening track 'Slip Away' has a terrific introduction and lyrically is extremely well put together, but the song is marred by over-eager percussion and guitar work. Any sense of fragility the song had vanishes under a treble-heavy production which leaves everything buried under the clatter of cymbals. The album’s highlight is 'Arrow', a quiet, brooding piano number with ghostly backing vocals. The reason it stands so far above its peers is simple - it’s by far the simplest, most straight-forward sounding song on the album. This is an album of two halves, but sadly the two halves have no natural breakwater which leaves the listener in a strangely irritated frame of mind: one moment, one is listening to the gentle strains of 'Low' and the next the truly awful 'If You Only Knew'. Indeed this switching of moods crops up in some of the songs themselves, most noticeably on the opening track 'Slip Away'. There are a few moments of real quality on 'Are You My Mother?', but the album is too uneven to bear repeated listening. There are, in my view, four or five very good songs on 'Are You My Mother?' The remainder, however, leave me neither hot nor cold. For me, it’s an album of missed opportunities – there are some great melodies and lyrics hiding somewhere beneath the unnecessary embellishments. To my mind, this album simply has too many musicians vying for space on cluttered tracks. Coming from someone of Calder’s obvious talent, this offering is a disappointment.

Track Listing:-

1 Slip Away
2 Low
3 Castor And Pollux
4 Arrow
5 If You Only Knew
6 Follow Me Into The Hills
7 Down The River
8 A Day Long Past It's Prime
9 So Easily
10 All It Is