(2020) Natalie Jane Hill - Azalea


Review:
This very impressive debut from Texas native (and current Appalachian resident) recasts the purest sort of folk music in a modern light, distilling intricate guitar picking and throaty, emotion-laden melodies into songs whose simple contours give way to hidden crevices and eccentricities. Let’s begin with the guitar playing, which is good enough to stand on its own in “Usnea,” in radiant cascades of pristine notes that recall Jack Rose’s “Cathedral et Chartres.” It’s the sort of playing that could easily hold its own on one of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem compilations, rich in feeling and assured in execution. And yet, it doesn’t stand on its own, but rather frames Hill’s low, tremulous vocals, a little like Karen Dalton in the wild country tang, a tad more like Jessica Pratt in warm, direct sophistication. The guitar playing is less showy, but just as good in the single, “Emerald Blue,” a rush of liquid strumming and sudden stabbing chords that parts like a stream around the rocks for Hill’s fluttering tune. “So true and I felt it with you, so true and I think you felt it too,” she trills going high but staying warm and sure, sounding a good bit like Joan Shelley, which is to say, very good. The songs are recorded in an utterly natural way, so that you nearly feel the air that pushes the notes out, the friction of fingers on well-used guitar strings. There’s nothing here but voice and guitar, but Hill gets a good deal of variety out of both her instruments. “All the Things I Never Said” infuses a jazzy urbanity into her long hovering notes, her lattice-like guitar motifs. “Wild Home” bends and twangs the notes, so that they seem to stomp a rustic dance.





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits