Sharron Kraus — The Woody Nightshade

“The Woody Nightshade” finds English folk singer Sharron Kraus taking a much darker and sonically less varied path then her last album 2008’s “The Fox's Wedding”. As she states in the albums linear notes she wanted this to be listened to as a whole album, and through-out there’s a very downbeat and morbid air prevalent.

Each of ten tracks on offer here are built around a very similar and doomed mixture of: gloomy acoustic guitar picks, murky lap steel and bass textures, morbid bowed dulcimer loops, electric guitar feed-back atmospherics,  claustrophobic Bouzouki strums, dreary auto harp plucks and dingy/doom drum rumbles 'n' rolls. And of course there's Kraus distinctive English folk voice toping the whole thing off- her voice stays mainly fairly forlorn and trouble thought with some gloomy harmonising from three female singers in the form of  Nancy Wallace, Susanna Starling, Clare Button.

I’ll have to say I’ve got rather mixed feelings about the album as a whole. I usually enjoy dark and trouble folk very much, but sadly many of the songs here seem rather one dimensional and samey. The pace from song to song sometimes varies a little, but sadly any variation seems to be mostly swamped by doom and murky slow monition drum pounds that feature in pretty much ever track here. On the positive side I can certainly appreciate and enjoy the sombre and grieving feel of the album as a whole- with the whole sequence of the ten tracks rather locking you in a sombre and sullen grip.

So if your looking for dark, airless and troubled folk album with slight grim rock undertones that’s well played yet more than a little samey “The Woody Nightshade” is certainly for you. But for me it’s all a little interchangeable and one toned in it’s dark and sombre plod for it’s own good.