Kate Rusby专辑介绍：Vocal cut-ups collide over wig-spinning everything-and-the-kitchen-sink beats. Electric guitars flame up and roar in a way that would have a frightened My Bloody Valentine asking for their mums, and their mums asking for their mums. Bass plunges to previously unfathomed bone-liquidising depths. If you can possibly imagine Foo Fighters playing at the same time as The Prodigy playing at the same time as a band made up of every member of The Fall (ever) and every member of The Polyphonic Spree (ever), all expressing themselves through the medium of interpretive air-raid three counties away, but with such intensity you’d swear they were dropping bombs inside every cell of your being (and from a sound system so vast Malcolm Tucker would have to move out of the TARDIS to leave room for the noise), then – hey! – congratulations. You’re just under a third of the way there…

Of course, it’s not like that at all. Why would it be? Why would anyone imagine Kate Rusby might radically alter what it is she goes about or the way she goes about it? GHOST (incredibly, her fourteenth album since 1995) does use production to draw ears to a different side of the music but, despite that freshening, it’s more-or-less as expected and that’s no bad thing. Steady away. Over the years her gentle conservatism (caution, even – successive releases bringing only a slight refinement of a tried-and-trusted formula) has been comforting. See Kate Rusby’s particular area of folk music as a neat corner of National Trust estate, if you like. A Northern field with really good facilities. A hectare of pastoral calm protected and maintained by a dedicated enthusiast raised on the land, producing a roughly biennial crop. Let’s call it the Contemporary Crossover. Sure, occasionally you might get the Mumford family going on holiday by mistake, tearing up from the smoke with Sons in the back of the Chelsea tractor and pitching a tent in the next field, before returning home with a box of authentic farm eggs for Grandma to suck. Sometimes, on the way to fight a / the / any good fight, Billy Bragg and his band of Merry Men stop off just down the lane for sustenance and an overnight sack out. That There Paul Weller once rented a cottage nearby when he got fed up with his pad somewhere in the city. So how ridiculous – hideous – would it be if Kate Rusby suddenly built a shoe-box estate and a shopping complex on her patch? As I People-Carriered Out? Here We Come A-Halfpricesaleing? Jolly Barista Boys? No, thank you…

Co-produced with husband Damien O’Kane and engineered by brother Joe (who has the wonderful knack of positioning his sister in the mix so she sings right in your ear) GHOST is immediately recognisable, though it continues the O’Kane-influenced stealth shift into looser, sometimes darker, arrangements begun on parts of MAKE THE LIGHT in 2010 and then furthered by 2012’s celebratory collection of rerecordings, TWENTY. Things tend to have a little more dust in the air around them, which subtly affects but doesn’t change the familiar mix of ancient murder ballads, ghost stories and tragedies of the heart.

Opening with an interpretation of THE OUTLANDISH KNIGHT is a mischievous surprise. Bleak and sinister (basically Nick Cave’s WHERE THE WILD ROSES GROW if performed three centuries ago), brooding strings spread like mist on the water as a grim serial killer finally gets his comeuppance. Breezy WE WILL SING is a spring-to-summer delight – Julian Sutton’s accordion bouncing right through banjo from guest Ron Block (who first came into the fold on TWENTY and has also recorded with Dolly Parton and Alison Krauss). THREE JOLLY FISHERMAN pulls on an Arran jumper and casts a net around a certain section of Rusby’s crowd – this is one for real ale drinking middle-aged anglers to soundtrack their catches. Blokeish pursuits also feature in THE MAGIC PENNY (a skint soldier gambles on dice and ends the night rolling drunk), and money figures again in the comedic THE SILLY OLD MAN.

I AM SAD (first heard as an ‘in session’ extra on the LIVE IN LEEDS DVD ten years ago, but remaining unrecorded until now) finally sees the light of day – or, rather, the murk of depressed days. Hopeful AFTER THIS could be heard as a wedding song, with a simple chorus about bells ringing and the verses having all faith in the future (though it also seems to reference THE MOCKING BIRD from MAKE THE LIGHT). Becoming a mother twice over in recent times suggests something far happier than THE BONNIE BAIRNS turns out to be. It’s amongst the saddest of Rusby’s ghost stories, and Steven Iverson’s beautiful minstrel-like electric guitar phrases lend it a distant medieval air – a reminder that being dead lasts for a long time. The album closes on its title track, with subtle effects ghosting quietly as Rusby performs solo at the piano. In a way that suggests a full circle or closure of some sort as, of course, solo at a piano is how she began two decades ago…

Whether it turns out to be the end of something or the start of something else, or even just some more of the middle, GHOST is a fine record. The production touches mean it takes marginally longer to settle in but, like all of her previous work, it will find great favour with audiences of both BBC6 Music (Mark Radcliffe is a particular advocate) and Radio 2 which, in itself, is quite some feat for a modest lass from Barnsley. Sleep sound in your beds; Kate Rusby is still tending her piece of land with the utmost care.

(The Mouth Magazine)