Alela Diane
It’s very rare these days to stumble across a musician who can perform song after song beautifully and without over-reliance on a backing band or studio editing… finally we have found someone who can give us everything we could want, in the form of Alela Diane.
Alela is the folk musician to check out at the moment; using each of her songs to tell a personal story accompanied by just a simple guitar beat, easy-going drum set and a haunting bluegrass fiddle. Okay, so it’s not exactly the kind of album you’d play when getting ready for a night on the town, or possibly even if you wanted cheering up.
It is in fact something you’d expect from a group of twenty-something’s gathered around a campfire on a warm evening with just a couple of makeshift instruments and tins of beer for company.
Each song on the record was written and performed solely by Alela; and amongst the melodies and melody, her voice has a great range of expressiveness as she shares her songs with us, whilst the arrangements are haunting and beautiful at the same time.
The care and attention lavished on every tiny detail throughout the album means that no song sounds like any other. However, utterly dominant throughout is the voice. Unhurried, completely sure of each move, it glides across these eleven songs with a complete disregard of the laws of gravity.
Rating: 4/5 - a pleasant listen.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison