Customer Reviews

Play Each Morning Wild Queen

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It's very rare that I fall in love so hard and so fast. The Flash Girls have struck me senseless. There is something about them, something deeply odd and beautiful.

"Pah! Tish and fipsy!" you might cry. But I know that these two formidable ladies have a keen sense of humour and wit. I know that they love folk music and yet do not regard it as sacred. They are willing to play with it, to insult it, to adore it and to drag it to places that the tedious folk-puritan crowd would scorn and deride in their ignorance.

What is so wonderful about Emma Bull and Lorraine Garland?

Well, in an age of spit and polish until all humanity is scrubbed away, the Flash Girls' music is pleasingly rough and ready. You will detect the odd mistake, but such a sacrifice in production makes the music far more immediate and human. The duo's voices live the songs. As if they were the characters themselves, telling you their tales in some rather splendid tavern. Emma and Lorraine's voices complement each other very well, alternating and supporting each other in a wonderfully unselfish way. Their subject matter is also eclectic . Songs about cliché and drink, old folk standards and childishness. During a time where there appears to be only three subjects in mass-market music (lust, self-pity and sheep-like rebellion) this is highly refreshing.

Best songs? Well, The A. A Milne based 'Buckingham Palace' is a delight in its catchy jaggedness. 'A Meaningful Dialogue' is folk meet 50's surf pop, with fab results. Wickedly funny and silly, the song creates a virtue in childish behaviour. 'Race to the Moon' has a driving, hypnotic chorus. 'Nottingham Ale' thrives on drunken chorus and celebrates a vital subject that pop all too often ignores; drink and being drunk. 'All Purpose Folk Song' is a gloriously sharp satire of cliché driven folk music. Taking the form of a capella, it recites pretty much every standard of cliché stricken folk, whilst retaining an odd love for it at the same time.

"That's all very well," harumphs friend reader, "but it still doesn't explain why you are in love them."

Ah, well. There is something... magical about this album. The Flash Girls are like two literary characters whom I have fallen in love with. Like with Rose Walker of Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman', Fuchsia of the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake or even Eddi of Emma Bull's own classic, 'War for the Oakes', I find myself in love. And I would kill for a poster of the duo. Though they would probably in top folk romantic style avenge my poor victim's death by sinking my ship with a large catapult or poisoning my vitals or something.

And then write a biting, kick-ass song about the incident, no doubt.

*Sigh*

"With a mandolin or an angry grin and a dead wife in the larder. And somewhere around this point in the song someone normally gets transformed into a loathely worm."

Pretty much every song on this album is top notch. You might not 'get it' on your first listen but persevere, it is well worth it. Several of the songs are penned by Neil Gaiman as well and jolly good they are as well. The band I currently want to see live most of all (though there is little chance, bah) and the biggest incentive for going to Minnesota I know of, being an ignorant Brit.

And there is a song with lyrics from the poetry of Dorothy Parker. Yeah, look impressed!

(Also check out the equally ace 'Maurice & I', their previous album for songs about Yeti, bean-sidhe and using sarcasm as a means to robbing gas stations)

If you're already a fan of the Flash Girls, this is their best album yet. If you're not, you will be after you listen to it. This folk-rock-eclectic CD ranges from the stark, compelling instrumental "Riding with Noel", to the timeless, stripped-down folk ballad "Lily of the West," to the catchy cheer of "Buckingham Palace" and "Nottingham Ale," to the laugh-aloud "A Meaningful Dialogue," to my favorite piece, the Neil Gaiman-penned "A Personal Thing," which is eerie and lyrical and edged with black humor, and packs quite an emotional punch.

Not one track is a throwaway, and almost all stand up to repeated listening. I know, it's been on constant rotation in my car since I got it. Don't miss this one.

Emma and Lorraine have been brilliant musicians for years, and their folk rock is some of the hottest, hippest, and cleverest ever done. It couldn't be anything else, what with the brilliance they bring to the music, combined with the elite writers creating some of the songs. Best-seller talent everywhere you look!