EP REVIEW: HerOrangeCoat – ‘Ballads for this Age’

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I have a thing about music that sits in the area of folk influenced music; especially music that takes the folk influence somewhere unexpected. So I have to admit that I am doubly ashamed to be coming to this review of HerOrangeCoat’s EP so very late. My shame is only increased by the fact that she plays a ukulele, an instrument I adore.

And I am going to start this review by saying that while you can hear the folk in her music, it forms only a part of the rich layered sound of her music. This is a sound that varies but always has soul.

Ballad 1 (Sorry) starts with her voice and ukulele and I was immediately drawn into what is an intensely personal song. And as more layers are added the feeling of resigned sadness and hurt continues. The song ‘is not a cry for help, but rather a resolute, resigned defeat. It speaks to the vast mental health emergency, whilst detailing HerOrangeCoat’s own personal journey with anxiety’. As you might be aware I have a personal connection with songs that address mental health in a personal way. And this is one of the best I have heard. It’s haunting, and hugely compelling.

The words are simply incredible, but it is the way she sings them that stays in your head; this is not just singing but a performance that is about emotion and feelings. A song that is so much more than the sum of the words, the music and voice.

Addressing a very real issue Ballad 2 (Skin Off My Back) ‘highlights the lack of safety for women, the song is an intimate imagined account of the very real situation faced by many. These are the fears women and femme people live with daily, the potential situations we are forced to face, the legacy we are obligated to carry from mother to daughter’.

My first thought on listening to this song was that the lyrics sound so much like an actual incident, so highly personal do the words feel. The song also draws on the so-called advice to women from the ‘authorities’ after the Sarah Everard kidnap and murder. The song is both personal and universal; something that makes the message so very strong.

Musically it has something of the theatrical ballad about it; it’s quiet but it’s there. There’s something of Brecht there; it’s quiet but it’s there.

Ballad 3 (Jamaica ’59) is another example of the way she takes the personal universal; being ‘her response to the anti-immigration rhetoric and policy that has dominated the UK news during her adult life, through the lens of her own simultaneous white privilege and proximity to immigration. The song’s repetition of Jamaica ’59 is a reference to the year when her grandmother moved to England to become a nurse’.

While it may be easy to describe this as a lament about the state of the UK, I would describe this as a protest song. Her personal commitment to change is a call to action for the rest of us. And while I have heard many songs addressing this subject none have the impact of this one.

There is another thing about this song; it’s intensely catchy in places, although this is contrasted by the parts that have something I can only describe as ‘a bittersweet sadness’. The whole thing might be described as a sad pop-folk song if one was searching for a glib description. I suggest you don’t. This is a song that makes you think with words that combine the political with the poetic. A song with musical beauty.

Ballad 4 (Second Nature) ‘plays on the absurdism of the societal and political response to the climate crisis, or rather the lack of response. It comes from an acute anger at the inaction of successive governments’.

Look, I can hear the shouts of ‘not another song about the climate crisis’ but before you dismiss it, she is simply giving her opinion in this song. You may disagree but I urge you to actually hear the song and the words before you dismiss it. The lyrics are well argued AND poetic, the music achingly beautiful.

The final song ‘Postscript’ is a ‘note to round this off, marking that, whilst things are difficult, it is much better to be aware of it all, that there can be power in this’. This is sparse with her voice and wonderful swells of voices. Simply exquisite.

Summing this up is hard. Musically it has hints of folk, theatrical ballads and laments of ages past, rich pop and Brecht. It has a certain timelessness being, for me, completely impossible to place in any type of music coming from a particular time. It is mesmirising, Haunting, compelling and gorgeously beautiful. But it is the unexpected connotation of this music with songs about things that are very much of now that surprises and enchants. Another layer of wonderful is added by the thoughtful and personal lyrics. And yet another by her voice, a voice that ‘acts’ the songs rather than just singing.

This EP is beautiful beyond words. And I am telling the truth here, I simply have no words that can adequately describe it beyond that.

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Frank is the website guy for Local Sound Focus. Takes a lot of photos and loves writing about new music.