By Danny Moran
Marple-born Kirsty McGee remains something of an enigma on the local music map.
Her Americana-inflected sideways take on the jazz standard, honed over seven albums, has brought her BBC playlisting, Folk Awards nominations, and rave reviews aplenty.
The inclusion of her haunting ‘Sandman’ on the Danny Boyle film, ‘Trance’ brought further attention.
Her ad hoc backing band, the Hobopop Collective, has been a versatile foundry for off-kilter song-craftmanship. Here, in no uncertain terms, is an artist just sitting and waiting for a wider audience to find her.
Her latest project, Ocotillo, sees a partnership with Californian singer-songwriter Robert Garson, who hails from Joshua Tree, where he runs a studio, writes roadhouse blues, and rares back in ragged jeans and a checked shirt, one would imagine.
Last night’s intimate curtain-raiser for their upcoming 25-date tour – a down home affair at the King’s Arms in Salford – showcased a thieved midget’s orchestra of offbeat instrumentation.
Between the two of them they got through lap steel, glockenspiel, mandolin, bass flute, regular flute, musical saw, a stomped tambourine, thumb piano, and a long, one-stringed African-looking thing with a horn called a phonofiddle, which apparently works like a gramophone player. Plus ace harp from local stalwart Clive Mellor, ex of the Lonesome and Penniless Cowboys.
McGee’s voice has deepened over the years and she’s at her best when she cuts loose: she can fly rather more than you think. Garson, meanhile, creaks and moans with the authenticity of one whose zip-code is the heart of the desert.
His ‘Come On’ invoked a punchy, pre-Stones blues; her ‘A Trick of the Light’ flirted with a straighter folk sensibility; best of all was the S&M spiritual, ‘Pray’, hung on a gospelly moan which hung in the air like a raw revelation.
With dates across Europe lined up and an album to follow early next year, it’s very much an act in the process of being minted.
The key to it seems to be McGee’s instinctive talent to reverse engineer a standard with one of the notes gloriously awry; a demolished chord where the ear expects a major. Garson meanwhile, offers a mirror to those westward glances, and the harmonies gel like Gram and Emmylou’s.
Muted strings and Tom Waits-ey vibes can be mangled appallingly in artless hands. When the writing’s this good, though, the sky’s the limit.
