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The Kirsty MacColl web site
A pitch-perfect voice and a songwriting quill of rare lyrical sharpness
yet always tunefully flourished - so why is Kirsty MacColl such an acquired
taste? Perhaps because her deadpan delivery is so alien to the RHYTHMANDBLUES
tradition into which just about every other pop voice fits. By contrast,
the only thing you'll hear raised in a Kirsty MacColl record is a sardonic
eyebrow. Because her sales pitch is so cool, you have to meet the songs
themselves more than halfway, and, in their slyly unassuming way, these
little gems have a lot to offer. Co-written by Johnny Marr (who also contributed
to her previous LP, the excellent Kite), Walking
Down Madison is a deceptively
urban yet down-beat opener to an essentially semi-acoustic student-friendly
rock album-their Children Of The Revolution is as near to The Smiths as
possible without Morrissey in the room-while the Mark E. Nevin collaboration
My Affair is a contrastingly sassy rebuff to snoops set to a euphoric salsa-hot
samba. Also outstanding, The Hardest Word is co-penned by brother Hamish
and affectingly hymns the importance of telling our nearest and dearest
how much they are loved. -
Mat Snow
Ever since her first recording, 1979's They don't know, Kirsty MacColl has remained a dark horse among songwriters, occasionally flitting in from the fringes to unleash an album, or cropping up as a guest of The Pogues, or even French And Saunders. Studios seem to make her nervous. For Electric Landlady, Kirsty and husband-producer Steve Lillywhite have roped in a rainbow coalition of collaborators. Johnny Marr co-wrote the loose, beatboxy Walking Down Madison (which coincidentally echoes the theme of Crystal Waters' irritating Gypsy Woman), and there are several appearances by guitarist Elliott Randall, erstwhile hero of Steely Dan's Reeling In The Years. Stylistically, Kirsty's predilection for gently-ironic Celtic folk surfaces regularly, with sundry Pogues cropping up on the likes of He Never Mentioned Love or The One And Only. Satisfyingly droll as this can be, the surprise success of the bunch is My Affair, where an army of Hispanic musicians under the direction of Angel Hernandez go salsa-crazy behind La MacColl's cool vocals. This is a defiantly untrendy record, which is one reason it deserves to do well.
Pogues' collaborator and television presenter Kirsty MacColl adopts the "something for everybody'' approach on her pleasingly titled Electric Landlady. Her voice has a sonorous tone and a nimble Celtic lilt but the going is not always easy as she skates across the socially conscious electro-rap of Walking Down Madison (co-written with Johnny Marr, who contributes a killer guitar part), the twee folk-pop of Halloween (co-written with Mark Nevin, formerly of Fairground Attraction) and the ghastly Club Copacabana-style cabaret of My Affair (that Nevin chap again). In the album's dying moments she strikes up a maudlin duet with her old chums, the Pogues, on The One and Only (not the Chesney Hawkes song) and finds her true metier at last.
Electric Landlady sees Kirsty jumping from jangly pop to hip-hop with the greatest of ease. The sparkling Walking down Madison and Children of the revolution, both written with Johnny Marr, stand out as two of the finest tracks Kirsty has ever recorded. In fact, each track is laden with tightly knit harmonies and lyrical twists. This hardly seems the work of the same person who wrote Chip Shop. Unfortunately Kirsty tends to veer towards the middle of the road with My affair and Halloween - a touch of rising damp in an otherwise thrilling record. Bedsit pop has rarely sounded so good.
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