Smoke Fairies | Strange The Things | CP002CD
01 | Dinner Plate 02 | Smoke Filled Room 03 | Catching Leaves 05 | Wedding Gown 06 | Cold Wind
07 | Strange The Things 08 | Good Day To Be Alive 09 | I'll Move On 10 | You Can't
11 | Running Along Side A Train
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Concentrated People proudly present another fantastic debut, 'Strange the Things' from the effervescent female duo, Smoke Fairies.
A lovingly crafted 11 track album awaits you and it's clear from the outset that their agenda is based around earthy, traditional folk and blues, a distinctive song-writing style and some wonderful, almost choral, vocal harmonies.
Mature beyond their years yet full of wide-eyed innocence and angst, Smoke Fairies sing about subjects that will be instantly familiar to anyone and manage to vocalise a wide range of emotions and feelings. Admiration, elation, isolation and abandonment all intricately woven into moments delivered with a combination of achingly beautiful vocal fragility and yet a gritty self assurance.
Tracks such as the opener 'Dinner Plate' and 'I'll Move On' are gutsy, bluesy affairs, featuring some wonderfully authentic, melodic, blues-rooted guitar picking, whilst the sumptuous melancholy of 'Good Day To Be Alive ' with its gentle piano work and plaintive melodies leave you with a bitter-sweet feeling that's simply divine.
The Smoke Fairies take our hand through their sepia tinted world and continue to show us our dispassionate and ill-at-ease nature when a loved one is away from our arms. This point elegantly summed up in 'Always In The Back', a futile look at time without their love 'singing' into their ears.
Next we find the jolty yet fluent, country flavoured pickings of 'Catching Leaves'. A wonderful song that changes from the musically quaint, whimsical verses into a full-on driving, dare we say riff based chorus before segueing effortlessly back to the verse. The chorus poignantly suggesting words aren't enough when we need that someone to be there: 'You said good things... But I needed you. Now all I have is dead leaves in my hands'. A theme that later seems to be in question after the charmingly adrift introduction to 'You Can't'.
'Running Alongside A Train' the last title, as seen on the track listings, is another blissful musical twist to the album and leaves us with an almost nostalgic 'I'll be thinking of you'.
The albums lyrics, which consistently hit your heart with overwhelmingly soft blows, coupled with the musical ingenuity of the release confirm that there is not a wasted moment on any track.
We at CP are sure that we are not the only people who will fall under the Smoke Fairies' spell and with their debut release you too can feel the enchantment that comes from combining such angelic voices and harmonies with such an authentic, earthy style. An unusual mix that works so well.