News ~ April 2010/Lou Rhodes ~ 'One Good Thing' released
15.03.10
Songs of innocence and experience. Lou Rhodes explores
the haunting vicissitudes of grief with minimal acoustic
album. New album, 'One Good Thing' out now.
19/04/2010
It’s now three years since her debut solo album, ‘Beloved
One’ was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, but in
March the former Lamb singer, Lou Rhodes finally
unveiled new album, ‘One Good Thing’.
It’s an understandably melancholy affair, charting
as it does the last two years of Lou’s life, from the
painful loss of her sister in May 2007 (which prompted
her to cancel her UK tour) and through her subsequent
personal renewal. So whilst tracks like ‘There For The
Taking’ pluck the most fragile of heart-strings and
expel the faintest, most desolate of breaths, the aching
isolation of Lou’s voice is lifted by a ‘million miles
of love’. The violins weep, and beautiful, haunted simplicity
of the solitary acoustic guitar strokes tears and stokes
hope. Sometimes, when the sun rests lowest on the horizon
it burns at it is at its most dazzling and beautiful.
The record was recorded solely in live takes with minimal
editing and overdubs, reflecting the raw, open-wounds
of the singer and a craving for the simplicity of previous
decades.
“Most of the music I’m inspired by was either recorded
years ago or uses similar old-school analogue techniques.
If I had a reference point for the recording of this
record it’d be stuff like Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves
Left’ or Nico’s ‘Chelsea Girl’.
For all its desolation, was there a sense of hope with
the record?
“Sometimes there’s one little thing that lifts you
up for a moment and plugs you into all that’s good in
the world. There’s so much in this life we can’t control.
All we can do is find the joy in the little things that
happen to us along the way”.
New single, ‘There For The Taking’ precedes the album
and features a haunting, Nico-esque Lou wrapping her
beautiful tonsils and around a tearful, cello-busting
lament.
Tour dates:
21 Apr BABYLON Istanbul
22 Apr FLECHE D’OR Paris
23 Apr THE ZWERVER Oostende
24 Apr AB CLUB Brussels
25 Apr ARENBERG Antwerp
27 Apr LUX Nijmegan
28 Apr DE DUIF Amsterdam
5 May GRUNSPAN Hamburg
6 May LIDO Berlin
7 May PALAC AKROPOLIS Prague
