Dawn Kinnard -Taking on 2008 With Her debut Album "The Courtesy Fall"
January 11, 2008, 05:16 PM Views: 666
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 Playing: January 15th - The Enterprise - London January 21st - The Luminaire - London January 28th - The Troubadour - London == Here are some facts that will soon be oft-repeated: Dawn Kinnard grew up in Pennsylvania in a church run by her Baptist preacher father. At sixteen she became obsessed with Elvis and swore never to marry as the only man for her – the King, of course – was dead. By her early twenties she was riding her beloved Harley-Davidson cross-country under big skies until she sold it to finance her gorgeous star-kissed first recording, an eponymous eight-tracker released on her own Rusted Rose label. Oh, and she was discovered, singing the songs that ended up on her debut album, ‘The Courtesy Fall’, in a Nashville bar called The Basement.
Kinnard explains how the album’s title came about. “My dad’s a preacher and he and my mum were invited to this charismatic church where they put their hands on your head and you fall down because you’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit,” says Kinnard. “My mum’s a bit shy and it freaked her out – she didn’t want to fall down – but the preacher whispered in her ear to give a courtesy fall if she didn’t get moved. It’s not anything bad against the church, it’s just about not knowing what’s true. Some people fall down for real, some people do the courtesy fall.”
The facts tell part of the story but the music tells more. ‘The Courtesy Fall’ brims with dissolved edges, expansive-yet-intimate woozy-beautiful songs about freedom, insomnia and paranoia. At the centre of it all, there’s Kinnard’s smoke and honey voice which wraiths around and then cuts through the piano and strings and Dusty In Memphis percussion. The album contains a number of sonic traces: songs which sound like feminine versions of Chris Martin or Ron Sexsmith (with whom she’s toured); hidden gems which could have been scored by Craig Armstrong; and moments which conjure a parallel universe where she’s the last lost girl at the bar, drowning her sorrows in a cinematic final glass of whisky. Kinnard’s musical sensibility comes as an offshoot from the music she grew up with – she names Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Staple Singers and Patty Smith as influences.
Take the pop perfection of ‘Island’, which sounds like the key moment in your favourite film, all star-spangled loveliness and cloud-grazing sonics – and the kind of chorus that will have whole nations singing it over and over again in the very near future. In fact, ‘The Courtesy Fall’ is littered with instantly loveable songs and hooks that hum their way into your personal headPod and stay there forever. Like the cute, woozy pop of ‘No Different Now’. Or ‘Fortune Teller’ which sees Kinnard channelling the troubled blues singers that so inspired her, in surreal cabaret style. Like the cinematic ‘Clear The Way’, it’s another perfect showcase for her incredible, intimate, emotionally drenched voice. Or ‘Devil’s Flame’ which is edgy, confrontational, defiant and insightful.
‘The Courtesy Fall’ was recorded in London earlier this year with Martin Terefe, who her manager quickly realised would be perfect for Kinnard’s songs. Terefe, who previously produced tracks for KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright and James Morrison, brought an open-ended style to the recordings, which allowed Kinnard to flourish. Take ‘Clear The Way’, a duet written during Kinnard’s time in West London. “I spent a lot of time alone in hotel rooms and I had a lot going on in my mind. I wanted my mind to be quiet so the song is about finding a quiet space. When I came to the studio I knew it had to be a duet and Ed Harcourt was the perfect person. He was just down the road, Martin gave him a call and it all happened really naturally.” ‘The Courtesy Fall’ also contains a song, ‘One Little Step’, co-written with Kinnard’s friend and musical collaborator Cerys Matthews. The pair met in Nashville after Kinnard met Matthews’ then-husband playing poker and subsequently spent “tonnes and tonnes” of nights, just sitting on the porch playing guitar til the sun came up.
So what else do you need to know about the music? Opening track ‘All In Your Head’unfurls in a sleep-walking fug of guitars and barely-there drums before exploding in the kind of epic cloud-bursting that Arcade Fire specialise in. Except here, there’s Kinnard, stock-still in the centre, a vocal centrifugal force bringing everything together. Then there’s the acoustic, heartbreak hotel of ‘Lean To The Glass’, which aside from being the kind of song that instantly makes you feel like you’ve known it forever, soundtracks a terrible, comforting loneliness that hangs around the song like early-morning cigarette smoke. Like she sings ‘don’t make me wait for you/ it’s just too hard to do.’ At the other end of ‘The Courtesy Fall’ there’s a sleepy, damaged lullaby by the name of ‘White Walls’. You know straight from the start – ‘I hate pills/ cheap thrills/ You go out/ You always say you will’ – that you’re in the presence of greatness, especially when the song takes a Colourbox-shaped U-Turn before it’s done.
Here are some lesser-known facts about Dawn Kinnard that are soon likely to become oft-repeated. She trained as a hairdresser after failing to get together the money to take up her art school place. The first time she ever made her own clothes, she took an old shower curtain and turned it into a dress. And with the Courtesy Fall, she’s superseded all the romantic, tragic details of her life with an album that’s bigger and more beautiful than all of it.
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Dawn Kinnard - The Courtesy Fall is OUT!