Album Reviews
Katy Carr’s ‘Coquette’ album reviews Nov/Dec 2009
‘Exquisite, original and lovely.’ PSYCHOLOGIES 4/5****
‘Coquette is an original and fascinating work,’ DAILY EXPRESS 4/5****
Carr’s ‘bald subject matter distances her from the kooky crowd.’ Q MAGAZINE4/5 ****
‘This is Carr’s most fully-formed music yet.’ MOJO 4/5 ****
Coquette is in Q’s top 50 downloads, November 2009.
‘Undoubtedly, Katy Carr has a sound all of her own.‘ MAVERICK 4/5 ****
‘ This album is a scrapbook of characters, places and stories from deep inside Carr’s imagination and it has been a mesmerising experience to glimpse into her world. I can’t fault this album. Quite simply it is a masterpiece.’ 5/5***** The Music Critic
‘teasingly saucy… there’s quality and substance lurking beneath the surface.’ RECORD COLLECTOR
‘Richly atmospheric and sensual, this is an album to immerse yourself in.’ BEARDED MAGAZINE
a sexy and powerfully strange song cycle tempered by an aching melancholy, never lapsing into sentimentality but still allowing itself moments of nostalgia. 8/10 Americana UK
‘Coquette’ is a beguiling beauty who breezes through enemy lines, but believe me you’ll follow her. Hear these siren’s songs and you’ll be smitten.’ 8/10 Whisperin and Hollerin
Coquette is a wonderful assortment of playful and emotive tracks that dazzle from start to finish. Subba-cultcha 4/5 ****
A compelling, fascinating and rewarding album. 4/5 ****Musicomh.com
‘don’t expect Andrews Sisters nostalgia this is edgy alt folk’ Sunday Mercury
‘Ms Carr’s finest album yet, her most refined and sophisticated, and really sound like no one else’ Organ Magazine
‘well crafted approach to alt folk’ Net Rhythms
KATY CARR’S REVIEW LIBRARY Full length reviews
4/5 Q Magazine
Eccentric alt-folker explores life during wartime
Tagged as ‘a star in waiting’ in 2001, eight years on Carr is still waiting, though one hop-es a modicum of justice will prevail. On these narratives themed around World War II, her crystaline vocals may suggest another Kate Bush acolyte, but the bald subject matter distances her from the kooky crowd. Variously she transforms into a German cabaret seductress (Erotic Days), a suicidal war widow (White Cliffs) and an Auschwitz inmate dreaming of flight (Kommander’s Car). As strings slither and soar, the crisply pronounced orchestrations strike a startling balance between the grim and the fairytale.
**** 4/5 Q Magazine December 2009. Review by Hugh Montgomery
4/5 MOJO
The third album from a compelling London-based singer/songwriter. She’s flying high.
After the witchy, electronic folk of 2003’s Passion Play, Katy Carr has created a concept album inspired by the 1940s wartime divas who entertained the troops. On White Cliffs, for instance she borrows from Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again to create a spectral. alt-folk song about a woman driven to distraction by the loss of her pilot lover. Berliner Ring is a track about Marlene Dietrich and the time she left Berlin to make her footunre in Hollywood, while Kommander’s Car is a gripping, filmic tribute to four Polish men who escaped Auschwitz concentration camp. Drawing on her English- Polish heritage, Carr sings with poise and passion, suffusing the album with warm string arrangements and subtle rhythms. She has often been compared to Kate Bush, and the similarity is present in the beauty and precision of her sound. This is Carr’s most fully formed music yet.
Mojo December 2009 Issue review by Lucy O’ Brien **** 4/5
4/5 Psychologies
Following her first two sensuous albums, Screwing Lies and Passion Play, comes this strange, heavenly beauty. It’s a concept album set in World War II (even the sepia-toned CD booklet smells of ancient mimeograph ink), with songs about wartime love (the ghostly ‘Star Song’), loss (lovely voice-and-piano ‘White Cliffs’), sex (mournful but ecstatic ‘Erotic Days’) and even Auschwitz escapees (the Euro dance-beaty ‘Kommander’s Car’). This collection might remind you of a more modern Kurt Weill, a more beguiling Kate Bush or an exquisite folk singer backed with a string orchestra. Original and lovely.
****4/5 Psychologies Review by Silvie Simmons.
5/5 The Music Critic
The artwork on this, the 3rd album from the London based songstress, conjures up a bygone era. The 1940’s to be exact. A time when the world was at war and Britain had its heroes. A time where girl next door stars like Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields were all the fashion. This era obviously hold a fascination for Carr, but while the song titles are evocative of that time (The White Cliffs, Berliner Ring, Army….. you get the idea), the music is far more current.
Carr’s vocals have a breathy quality, sort of Beth Orton meets Cara Dillon with hints of Eleanor McEvoy, but with an undeniable Englishness about it. Musically she takes her influences from the world of folk and mixes it with electonica and lush arrangements for a soundtrack that while not grabbing you on the first listen, certainly grows on you with repeated plays. This is music that requires a wee bit of work on the listeners behalf, but the rewards are certainly worth it.
After the brief opener, Star Song, we are introduced to the wonderful Sparkle, a mesmerising song that has a music box quality about it. Hot on its heals is Berliner Ring, the accordion and arrangement giving it a Parisian feel, conjuring up images of the bustling clubs of occupied France, where glamorous singers entertained the officers and well heeled of Paris.
Carr has an undeniable skill as a song writer and lyricist. Her ability to use music to transport you to another place and time is extraordinary, with tracks like the exquisite Belladonna and the dreamy Violetta proving this beautifully.
This album is a scrapbook of characters, places and stories from deep inside Carr’s imagination and it has been a mesmerising experience to glimpse into her world. I can’t fault this album. Quite simply it is a masterpiece.
4/5 Daily Express
HAUNTING: Carr’s songs have spectral atmosphere
COQUETTE is an original and fascinating work.
Carr celebrates the “beautiful feminine energy” of war-time icons Gracie Fields, Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, evoking their resilience, beauty and eroticism in the most haunting and uncanny ways.
The songs have spectral atmospheres and cover various themes: White Cliffs tells of a suicide when a housewife learns of her pilot husband’s death and Berliner Ring portrays Marlene Dietrich trapped in Berlin at the outbreak of war.
4/5 Subba Cultcha
Katy Carr returns with her third independent release Coquette; enchanting and powerful, it’s her most complete and compelling work to date
Inspired by themes and stories from Britain, France, Germany and Poland in the 1940s, comes the third musing from London singer/ songwriter Katy Carr. Coquette was recorded in a bedroom studio in Muswell Hill, North London with producer Nick Crofts; it follows on from her previous independent releases of Screwing Lies (2001) and Passion Play (2003) as arguably her most complete and compelling work to date.
Ranging from the playful and seductive ‘Erotic Days’ to the tender and haunting sounds of ‘Sparkle’, It would be difficult to purely pigeon hole Coquette as a folk album; It’s music steeped in history. Taking influence from the grand dames of frontline entertainment and Hollywood such as Gracie Fields, Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers her music also flirts with jazz and more classical influences. She sings of love and fears at a time where hope was all one could cling on to. Her music speaks volumes and is filled with beautiful narrative. ‘White Cliffs’, which takes from the Vera Lynn classic ‘We’ll Meet Again‘ is a harrowing tale of a saddened female contemplating suicide at the death of her pilot husband; similarly, in ‘Kommander’s Car’ she writes of four men attempting to escape the Auschwitz. It’s a wonderfully crafted piece that draws you in.
Far more than the enchanting narrative that runs throughout her album, it’s her hypnotic voice that best serves this album. Both delicate and passionate, she has a wonderful ability convey her music’s mood and pace with seamless ease. Coquette is a wonderful assortment of playful and emotive tracks that dazzle from start to finish.
4/5 Maverick Magazine
A quirky time machine trip back to the 1940s
I’m not sure how or why this ended up at Maverick Towers. It doesn’t fall into the bracket I expect to hear or read about in these hallowed pages…but…it’s very good – so, listen up.
Carr’s unmistakeably English vocals are of the distinctive type that might just switch you off at the first few bars. Here, Carr sings tales from the 1940s, with the subject matter including a young Marlene Dietrich; a suicidal war widow; and the true story of an escape from Auschwitz, all in a breathy and often understated voice. Utilising folk instruments, such as accordion and acoustic guitars, Carr fuses them with modern electronica sounds to create an intriguing musical canvas that is at times epic and others as subtle and beautiful as an old fashioned music box.
While at times sounding like Joni Mitchell’s jazzier days or a more sane Kate Bush, Carr even drifts into the realms of soundtracks that wouldn’t be amiss on a Tom Waits album. Undoubtedly, Katy Carr has a sound all of her own. The opening track Star Song reaches stratospheric heights, setting a standard that the remainder of the album mostly keeps up with (Berliner Ring being one of the weaker tracks and a definite exception).
As an aside, if there were a series of awards for album artwork and packaging, I’d be nominating this. The sleeve folds out to be a double-sided work of art, with 1940s cartoonised images by the excellent Susan Burghart. Tied into each of the album’s track titles, the imagery is, like the music, really quite striking and intriguing.
Record Collector
The Amelia Earhart of alt folk in full flight…
A former RAF pilot celebrating the “beautiful feminine energy” of old school glamour icons such as Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, there may be a danger that Carr’s intriguing back story could distract from her actual music. Presenting herself as a kind of alt folk burlesque Vera Lynn, her wartime obsessions peppered across these 12 tracks, she performs an admirable balancing act between novelty and creativity.
Her third album hones the sound she’s been working on since the turn of the century, initially fronting a group winsomely called The Aviators. Each song appears as a self-contained short story, such as her tribute to Auschwitz survivors (Kommander’s Car) or star-crossed lovers escaping to a better life (Violetta).
If all this sounds a tad mannered or contrived, fret not. Carr’s choice of instrumentation on each of her vignettes perfectly suits the subject matter, especially the Berlin cabaret accordions and violins of the teasingly saucy Erotic Days. She may have built a fanciful world around her work, but there’s quality and substance lurking beneath the surface.
Organ Magazine
KATY CARR – Coquette (Deluce) – This third Katy Carr album is a delicate delight. A new album alive with gentle glowing songs, with soothing words, with little twists somewhere in there with those flighty butter wouldn’t melt lyrics and that velvety voice of hers. Not so delicate that you can’t really grab hold of it all, these are strong confident clever songs, songs you can really get catch great big strong handfuls of. Flights of fancy indeed and if we were feeling lazy and looking for shortcuts we’d talk of English folk and Kate Bush, of Sally Oldfield and Bat For Lashes, of thirties/forties night clubs, nouveau lines, a touch of Dietrich or Piaf, a hint of Beardsley, of Spitfires purring over white cliffs and art deco sunset stained glass windows, of lace fronted pillbox hats and luscious red lips. Drawing on strings, orchestral play, pulling on threads, and that innocent undercurrent of hers once more, that playful naughtiness that brings a smile, that voice that soothes so much. Ms Carr’s finest album yet, her most refined and sophisticated, and really sound like no one else, her bold folky personality is shining through now, her folk song background playing with those chamber orchestra strings. This is a confident Katy Carr, a strong album full of creativity and alive with emotion, full of soothing goodness (and an erotic day or two), Katy’s finest album yet, fine flights indeed – www.myspace.com/katycarrmusic or www.katycarr.com
Bearded Magazine
Those magnificent men in their flying machines… Katy Carr is such a fan that she’s written an album on the theme. Lyrically, Coquette is a Second World War concept piece, paying tribute to the brave chaps who helped save our bacon in the Battle of Britain, and the women who inspired them to do it.
Carr is a qualified pilot, always fascinated by the skies, whose third album injects her sensual oeuvre with a healthy splash of romance. In a voice alternately breathy and yearning and swoopingly multi-octaved, she channels the “beautiful feminine energy” of the likes of Gracie Fields, Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.
Musically, the album combines the feel of mid-century torch songs and waltzes with elements of traditional folk and spy film soundtracks, and hints of Bat For Lashes and Felt Mountain-era Goldfrapp. Despite these seemingly disparate ingredients, it all hangs together surprisingly cohesively.
This would be great soundtrack music: some tracks are the most convincingly romantic music I’ve heard for a while. The nearness of death creates an intensity to her characters’ yearning while their lovers are away (’Sparkle’, ‘Butterfly’); and to their lovemaking when they return safely once more (’Erotic Days’).
However, not everyone makes it, and the darker emotions are acknowledged on ‘Orchidophile’, where the flowers remind her ‘of a love I once knew’; while closer ‘The White Cliffs’ borrows from Vera Lynn in a story of woman preparing to throw herself over cliffs over her dead airman lover.
The scope broadens on two of the more uptempo numbers. ‘Berliner Song’ pays tribute to the divine Ms Dietrich’s desire to escape the rise of the Nazis and make it on the world stage. And the breathlessly tense ‘Kommander’s Carr puts herself in the place of a group of men escaping Auschwitz.
Richly atmospheric and sensual, this is an album to immerse yourself in. It’s not a collection of classic songs per se, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Pour yourself a glass of red, and prepare to wallow … Review by Ben Wood
8/10 Americana UK
Spectral chanteuse stirs wartime ghosts
‘Coquette’ is a record that has come unstuck in time. It’s a World War II concept album, one imbued with sensuality and loss and passion, not so much evoking as conjuring the period, its sounds and smells, its ghosts. But it’s not a stoic, stuffy period piece. Actually it’s one of the most vibrantly alive records I’ve heard in a long while, a kaleidoscopic swirl of sounds and ideas, a sexy and powerfully strange song cycle tempered by an aching melancholy, never lapsing into sentimentality but still allowing itself moments of nostalgia. It smells of perfume mixed with sweat.
Subjects touched upon stay true to the wartime atmosphere. ‘Berliner Ring’ is a widescreen tribute to Marlene Dietrich, though one that is not framed posthumously. ‘Kommander’s Car’ is the vibrant, joyous story of four Auschwitz escapees, and feels to be constantly in motion. ‘The White Cliffs’ finds Ms. Carr in a more sombre mode as she recounts the suicide of an RAF widow, culminating heartbreakingly in a hope-blind rendition of ‘We’ll Meet Again.’
This is music to set oneself adrift upon, a sad erotic trip, sleepy and strange. Closing track ‘Sleepyhead’ acts like a lullaby, and as the listener drifts away they may feel the mesmerising dreamscape Ms. Carr has woven being wrapped just that little bit tighter around them.
4 /5 Musicomh.com
If listening to an album from start to finish is becoming a thing of the past, online radio stations, song-shuffling and diminished attention spans should toll the death knell for concept albums. But with the release this year of The Decemberists’ masterful folk-rock opera The Hazards Of Love and Katy Carr’s new release, Coquette, a collection of songs relating stories of love, death, flight, fighting and flirting in World War Two, perhaps there is life in the concept album yet.
A versatile performer and writer, Katy Carr’s work is infused with diverse influences including folk, music hall, burlesque, standards… and experience as an RAF pilot. These disparate influences are tied together in a strong, well realised persona – kind of like Lady Gaga meets Vera Lynn.
Acapella opener Star Song and following track Sparkle are mysteriously seductive tracks in the style of Julee Cruise. The urgent Berliner Ring provides reminisces about Marlene Dietrich (”I saw her smoking a cigar”) and the exodus of people who were able to flee before the oncoming tempest of war. The imagery is as powerful as Dietrich’s was, and the instrumentation and arrangements urgent and moving.
Erotic Days is an aural burlesque – grand vocal gestures interspersed with the musical equivalent of a hip wiggle. As the guitar notes are bent and the orchestra’s strings plucked furtively, you can almost hear the elbow-length gloves being teased off and the stockings rolled down. It’s Carr’s ability to suggest moods, settings and scenes that creates the atmosphere needed for this concept to work.
Violetta, a mysterious French love song with Carr’s husky breathy vocal accompanied by a staccato accordion and swooping strings, has a classy, stylish, sexual energy that sits in contrast to the downbeat Butterfly, which tells the story of another flight, two new lovers hesitant to flee but seizing their chance to see how their life together might work out.
Carr is equally capable of voicing the roles of vulnerable ingénue or and femme fatale. The arrangements of strings, multilayered vocals and other instrumentation are used to great effect to evoke times past, palpable emotion, tense relationships and life and death decisions.
The album suffers from the affliction of any concept piece in that, if taken out of context, the songs lose their relevance. Numbers such as Orchidophile are strange enough in the context of Coquette, but on their own run the risk of seeming meaningless or, worse still, overly contrived.
But the superlative instrumentation and performance mean even though they seem odd alone, the songs remain beguiling. While it seems like something of a fruitcake idea, the attention to detail in evidence throughout Coquette ensures that it remains a compelling, fascinating and rewarding album.
Net rhythms
Whiserin and Hollerin 8/10
‘CARR, KATY’ ‘COQUETTE’ from Whisperin and Hollerin
– Label: ‘DELUCE RECORDINGS (www.katycarr.com)’
– Genre: ‘Pop’ - Release Date: ‘9th November 2009′
Our Rating: 
It’s always dangerous to judge a book by the cover, but it must be said that the signals given out by KATY CARR’S first album since 2003’s ‘Passion Play’ could easily sell you a dummy. Encompassing RAF planes, 40s fashions, songs with titles like ‘The White Cliffs’ and ‘The Kommander’s Car’, the mysterious ‘Coquette’ appears to be staking its’ claim as the forces’ new sweetheart. Hell, I know there’s a recession on, but we haven’t broken out the ration books again, have we?
As is often the case, you need to see the bigger picture to understand the imagery rather better. Born of a Polish mother and English father, Katy Carr has an unusual background, made all the more fascinating by her youthful obsession with flight and an RAF scholarship which has not only given her a mastery of the skies but also a true insight into the effect aeroplanes have had in terms of waging war.
Thus, if I sound like I’m rather awkwardly introducing a ‘concept’ album then yes, in a way I am. ‘Coquette’ is after all, peopled with unlikely heroes from the mists of World War II and, as Katy herself attests, it’s the ‘beautiful feminine energy’ of the likes of Gracie Fields, Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers among others that was the starting point for most of the songs making up this long-awaited third album.
However, if you’re expecting the record to sound like a lost Andrews Sisters 78 then you soon need to think again. The first real ’song’ here, ‘Sparkle’ (which displaces the tiny glockenspiel and vocal refrain of ‘Star Song’) is all rolling drums, pinched and jazzy guitar and plucked strings, with Carr’s voice floating in from the school of disembodied ethereality. She actually sounds a little like Beth Gibbons after considerably fewer cigs, but her spectral tones are enormously attractive and while the subject matter may seem anachronistic, the sound itself is state of the art.
Besides, the record’s WWII fixation yields several enormous successes along the way. Buoyed up by clattering beats, accordions, upright bass and tablas, the Marlene Dietrich-influenced ‘Berliner Ring’s Film Noir-ish atmosphere is a fitting tribute to this enduring 20th Century icon. The strident ‘Kommander’s Car’ all percussive guitar and raw bass is a tense and nervous commentary about the courage of four men who successfully escaped the degradation and certain death of Auschwitz against ridiculous odds. ‘The White Cliffs’, meanwhile, isn’t actually a cover of Dame Vera Lynn’s famous wartime standard, but it’s certainly the inspiration behind this clever and affecting waltz-time ballad where love stretches across the miles of a ravaged continent (I’m telling you the one you love is miles away…somewhere in Spain) and absence makes the heart grow forever fonder.
But even when the turmoil of ‘39 and ‘45 doesn’t directly appear to affect the progress of the album, ‘Coquette’ is very stylish and enjoyable indeed. With its elegant, chamber-folk strings and lightness of touch, ‘Orchidophile’ adds up to a modern torch song of real repute. ‘Violetta’s’ sparse bass and accordion backdrop is the perfect framework for Carr to hang her sultry vocal web upon and there’s an almost nursery rhyme innocence to the delightful closing track ‘Sleepyhead’ which ensnares you the moment you clap ears on it.
Katy Carr has a lot going for her. Her sensual vocal delivery and the frisson of sophistication emanating from her best songs gropes towards timelessness. Her ‘Coquette’ is a beguiling beauty who breezes through enemy lines, but believe me you’ll follow her. Hear these siren’s songs and you’ll be smitten.
Sunday Mercury
Fatea
Katy Carr
Katy Carr has long been a songwriter’s songwriter, innovative and more than a little out there. She sits on a rich vein of creativity that turn many of her songs into performance. “Coquette” is an album that will hopefully bring her a wider audience. The thirties and forties theme of the cover offer genuine clues into her thought process, but even then it’s the unexpected way she brings these thoughts into contemporary soundscapes, infused with a rich vocal focal point. There’s an elegance and panache about the arrangements that infuse a sense of excitement.
KATY CARR FEATURES NOV
DECEMBER 2009
MARYLEBONE JOURNAL DEC / JAN 2009
Vintage Carr
Mark Riddaway meets Marylebone-based singer Katy Carr and hears about an Auschwitz escape, her love of flying and meeting Vera Lynn.
Katy Carr’s new album began, she says, with her grandmother. “I’ve got a grandma, she’s 96 years old. When she was about 92, and my grandfather had died, she got very lonely and she would sit in her house and say nothing. Then one day I happened to say, ‘What was the war like grandma?’ and she just opened up.
“I couldn’t stop her speaking. It was just something she really wanted to talk about. Then we got onto talking about the songs of the era. At that time I’d just got into the ukulele and I was able to sit with her and play her these songs – things like Painting the Clouds with Sunshine and George Formby and Sunny Side of the Street, Cheek to Cheek, Sally, all these songs from the 40s. And that’s really where it all started.”
Pop music has long had a habit of looking backwards, but while a glut of 20-something singers are currently mining the 1980s for synth bleeps and shoulder pads, Katy’s musical nostalgia is for a far earlier and less fashionable era. With song titles such as The White Cliffs, Berliner Ring and Army, and subject matter that embraces Marlene Dietrich, Spitfire pilots and an escape from Auschwitz, the 29-year-old singer’s third release, Coquette, is that rarest of beasts
– a second world war concept album that’s not by Vera Lyn.
Songs about Nazi death camps rarely trouble the charts, but Katy, it’s fair to say, is not overly concerned with following the herd. Everything about her exudes a gentle and hugely appealing eccentricity, from her conversation to her clothes. When we meet for a cup of tea in the fitting surroundings of Alfie’s Antiques Market, she arrives looking as though she’s just stepped from the set of Brief Encounter, and she talks with the same wide-eyed enthusiasm about her 1925 American banjolele and troop movements during the battle for Warsaw.
And Katy’s interest in warfare and military history is by no means some arty affectation. She has always been fascinated by flying, and when she was a teenager she set out to join the air force. “I had piano lessons and a few singing lessons when I was growing up, but I didn’t really think I wanted to be a musician,” she says. “I wanted to be in the RAF. I joined the Air Training Corp when I was 13 years old. I thought the entertainment business was absolutely rubbish, and there was no way I wanted to join it.”
When she did eventually go to music school it was on a scholarship from the RAF, with the intention of returning to the military after her degree was completed. But her time at university changed everything. “Something snapped,” she says. “I couldn’t go back into the military after I discovered the creative world. It was a complete 180 degree turn. The creative world is about wanting to share joy and love with the world, and the military is something very disciplined and contained.”
The vocations of music and the military are clearly not natural bedfellows, unless you’re into the whole bearskins and brass instruments thing. But flying fighter planes and performing on stage do share an element of thrill seeking, of personal courage. “When I went for my university interview,” says Katy, “I’d only written two songs, and the teacher said, ‘You haven’t got many songs,’ and I said, ‘But I’m a pilot.’ And he said, ‘Really? Well that’s very similar
to music.’ And he just signed me in.”
Her time in the air force also imbued Katy with a touch more backbone than your average winsome folk singer. “If you have that ability to be a little bit disciplined, it helps – if you have that determination that the military gives you, that strategy.” Emerging from college, Katy’s single mindedness and drive were essential. Like so many talented young musicians, she found herself cut adrift from a conservative and risk averse music industry. “Major labels – in fact most labels – will ignore you a little bit if you’re not part of a musical scene or if you don’t fit in.” And Katy quite clearly isn’t an easy fit with mainstream scenes. Rather than give up, she set up her own record label and began releasing CDs under her own steam.
“It’s been quite a journey,” she says. “The first record, Screwing Lies,
was made on a complete shoestring.
I recorded it in a converted toilet block in Epsom. The men’s toilet was the studio booth and the ladies’ toilet was the recording booth where all the instruments were. I was getting in money in whatever ways I could. I was handing out fliers outside London clubs to pay for it. For the second album, Passion Play, I got a loan from the Prince’s Trust, and I managed
to wheel and deal and save to put
the latest one out from the sales
of the others.”
Along the way, Katy’s alt-folk style has evolved significantly. Her earlier work, although clearly blessed with an abundance of talent, sometimes sounds a bit meandering and nebulous – a beautiful voice drifting around in search of the right songs. Coquette, on the other hand, is taught, forceful and coherent. “When you’re trying to find your feet, with the first two albums I had no idea how to release records. I was just learning as I went,” says Katy. As she has matured, so has her music.
The lead single, Kommander’s Car, is a case in point. Driven by the tense, urgent scratch of a percussive guitar, the song melds strings, piano, a raw bassline and Katy’s haunting voice in a breathless, uncomfortable four minute tale of a man in mortal danger.
“Kommander’s Car is a very significant track because it is written about a Polish chap who escaped from Auschwitz in 1942,” she says. “He is called Kazimierz Piechowski and he was put in Auschwitz not because he was a Jew but because he was a boy scout. On 1st September 1939 the Germans invaded Poland. They made it to his house on the 3rd September. They rounded up the teachers, the academics, the boy scouts, took them into the town square and murdered them. Kazimierz managed to run away from the square, but the SS caught him on the other side of the town and took him to the Gestapo headquarters and basically said to him, ‘We have something worse than being shot for you.’”
Piechowski was sent to Auschwitz in June 1940. In June 1942, after two years of living in the closest place to Hell that humankind has ever constructed, he and three of his fellow inmates managed to escape, dressed as SS officers. “This song is only about five seconds of someone’s life,” says Katy. “It’s the end bit of the escape. The escape was very complicated, but it is the very last part. It was the most important five seconds as it was life or death. Either he got out the gates or he died.”
In August, Katy, who is half Polish and has visited the country many times, was able to meet with Mr Piechowski and play him the song. “It was the most moving experience,” she says. “He listened to my song and told me why it was such an important piece of work. He talked about it being very dramatic and that when he listens to it he feels like he was back in that time, he was back in that car when he was leaving Auschwitz.”
Katy was clearly deeply affected by the meeting. “He is 90 years old now, but there are things that you cannot forget – being a prisoner in Auschwitz, seeing so many people murdered and the level of darkness, the level of evil in a place like that, never escapes you.”
Is it not strange, I ask, to want to examine such a dark period of history. “I have had a Polish lady, 90 year old, say to me: ‘Why do you not learn songs of your own age?’ But then another lady said: ‘The songs of our age are so much more melodic and so much more expressive, so that is probably why she is interested in this era.’
I have really wanted to take stories from the past and bring them into the contemporary – that’s something that is very interesting to me, taking historical stories and bringing them to a new generation. There is a responsibility to that as well.”
There are touches of light relief on the album, not least Katy’s beautiful, soaring version of the wartime classic Lili Marlene – a song that showed how music can transcend cultures even while bombs are falling all around. “It was a German song, written in 1908, but it was sung over the whole of Europe. It was translated into every single language. I could sing this song to any nationality of that generation of people and they will know the tune.”
One of the best know English versions of the song was sung by Dame Vera Lynn, a heroine of Katy’s who she met earlier this year.
“Somebody gave me a tip off that Dame Vera was going to be signing books at a London book store in Piccadilly. She never really comes to these public signings very often, as she is 92 years old, so I wrote to her publisher and they forwarded my message to her. Her daughter, Virginia Lynn, answered the email and we started a discourse.When I met her they were really lovely people, Virginia and her husband Tom, and we have stayed in touch. I’m going to be playing at all the Vera Lynn events next year.”
Dame Vera recently became the oldest person to have a number one album in the UK. Does that restore some of Katy’s faith in the modern world? “It does a little,” she says. “It is a wonderful era that we are living in. We can appreciate all different types of music. It is really heart warming.”
‘Kommander’s Carr’ Katy Carr feature in Polish Observer 16-31 Dec 2009
About your history and love of Poland, your music, documentary and flying.
Kommander’s Carr
So please tell us about your Polish Roots…
My mother is Polish. My Father worked in Poland during the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. He worked for a company in Wroclawek where my mother also worked and that’s how they met. We lived in a block of flats. I can’t remember much about this time because I was only 5 years old, but I remember a little about Polish school [laughter].
Afterwards your parents moved to Great Britain?
Yes, I came here when I was 5 years old and I started school here. However every year I went to Poland for my holidays. My mother has many sisters, therefore I have many aunties.
Then can I say that Poland is your second country?
Poland is my country. I am half Polish and half English, but I have more Polish Blood. Whenever I am in Poland I feel at home.
Is it true that you would like to live in Poland?
Yes because it is a very beautiful country. There are beautiful beaches, mountains, countryside but most importantly – people. I really like Polish people…..Watch this space more to be added from a future translation! for PDF CLICK HERE The Polish Observer Katy is on Pages 1/16/17 keep clicking to get the downloadable file! Interview by Monika Rudzińska, Editor of The Polish Observer.
Various BLOG reviewers
Helen McCookerybook Blog
Katy Carr: Coquette – Greg Kurstin and Inara George (otherwise known as Bird and a Bee) must be weeping into their mirror-mirror-on-the-wall!
Here is Katy, challenging them for their pop-electronica crown, but with some of the most beautifully-recorded string arrangements I’ve ever heard- not so much lush and blossoming but twiggy and just resonant enough to remind you that there are real people there playing real wood with real horsehair; meanwhile, her voice sparkles with joie-de-vivre, confident, pure, flexible, controlling the complex arrangements that have more hooks than Can’t Get You Out Of My Head but still manage to sound left-field.
This is an absolutely beautiful album. I have heard lots of these songs in their simple live form and they absolutely flower in the studio.
Katy has been fond of ‘mad’ women performers like Tori Amos and Kate Bush for a long time.
But with this album, she shows us that it is the rest of us that are mad and it is Katy that is sane. There is a special place for women performers with a vision, and Katy has reserved herself a worthy position there. this is about the fifth time I have listened to this collection of songs, and I’m still hearing new and inspiring details in it every time.
I used to be Katy’s teacher years ago: the pupil has far outstripped the teacher, which is exactly as it should be.
Katy, I am proud of you!
withmusicinmymind.com Blog spot
L’Angleterre nous gâte en cette fin d’année musicale. Après l’incroyable et inattendue découverte de Gabby Young, je vous propose de découvrir sans plus attendre la grande artiste qu’est déjà Katy Carr. Cette demoiselle établie à Londres est une artiste le plus souvent accompagnée de son groupe The Aviators. Elle a créé son propre label Deluce Recording qui lui a permis de sorti deux albums : Screwing Lies (2001) et Passion Play (2003) extrêmement prometteurs prédécesseurs de Coquette son troisième opus. J’ai eu un énorme coup de foudre pour sa musique. Quand j’ai écouté pour la première fois Coquette, j’étais en plein rêve : un son léger et limpide, superbement arrangé et travaillé, original, de nombreux genres musicaux s’entremêlaient de la façon la plus gracieuse possible : folk, pop de chambre, cabaret jazz, etc. pour le plus grand plaisir de mes oreilles. Kathy Carr possède également le genre de voix que j’affectionne tout particulièrement : d’une subtilité, finesse, pureté et beauté absolues, capable de transmettre des émotions intenses et profondes.
Mais la musique et la voix de Katy ne se limitent pas à être des enchantements, non Coquette est en réalité un album concept qui tourne autour de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. C’est pour le moins original et inspiré. Ses textes sont des histoires concernant les femmes et hommes confrontés au drame humain provoqué par la guerre et rend indirectement un hommage poignant aux icônes glamour de l’époque telles que : Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Vera Lynn et Gracie Fields. 30 secondes de recueillement avec l’introduction éthéré de Star Song pour se plonger et se noyer avec l’aérien et vaporeux Sparkle. Somptueux et foncièrement envoûtant. Berliner Ring qui évoque Marlene Dietrich bloquée à Berlin au tout début de la guerre. Un hymne extrêmement énergique et vivant d’une grande perfection mélodique. Ce petit chef d’oeuvre jazzy/pop est très addictif. Le léger et élégant Erotic Days possède un côté burlesque savoureux et sensuel cependant il ne prépare pas au délicieux choc provoqué par la magie du morceau chanté en français Violetta. Tant de grâce et de douceur sont presque insoutenables.
Butterfly est une pure merveille de mélancolie et de sobriété qui déploie sa beauté en crescendo. Nous voulons définitivement nous aussi nous envoler avec la musique de Katy. Le côté mélodramatique Orchidophile met plus que jamais en évidence la pureté de la voix de Katy, le résultat est aussi fascinant que troublant.Kommander’s Car relate l’histoire de quatre hommes qui se sont enfuis d’Auschwitz, l’artiste a même rencontré le dernier survivant de cette épopée : Kazimierz Piechowski. Un petit chef d’oeuvre de pop de chambre rythmé ensorcelant. Belladonna est un sommet concernant le travail de l’instrumental : époustouflant. Ambiance funèbre de circonstance pour l’intense et solennel Army. The White Cliffs raconte le suicide d’une femme après avoir appris la nouvelle de la mort de son mari aviateur. Pour adoucir les propos relativement dramatiques, le côté décalé de la musique est mis en évidence. Un petit bijou. Sleepyhead prend des airs de lullaby des plus ravissantes et paradisiaques pour clôturer d’une fort charmante l’album.
Beware ! Masterpiece in sight !
The Lowdown: Carr weaves a string of evocative tales of life in the ’40s. This is a very European record; the sound of English folk, with occasional French vocals and a truly Teutonic song, the brilliant Berliner Ring, which bears similarities in essence to Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree.
Carr is certainly full of ideas and she isn’t afraid of subjects like the death of a loved one. With her backing band The Aviatiors (cruelly uncredited) has produced a mystical, ethereal record. In addition, the Art Deco-influenced artwork which has Carr dressed in wartime clothing, from glam-wear to factory apparel, fits the mood.
With so many female artists following a very tired formula (hello Katie Melua) it’s highly refreshing to see a woman go against the grain, in terms of music, writing and concept.
Trivia: Carr is a qualified pilot having served with the RAF.
Self as Fractal Blogspot Monday Music #42 (Katy Carr) nov 09
I mentioned Katy Carr on this very blog, before the days of Monday Music, when I would just find and deliver.
But those were the days when I’d comment on every song. (Ah, the days!) And so it was at least a year that I knew Katy Carr had a new album coming up, but couldn’t find information online about it, and thus couldn’t post.
Now, this is a somewhat spoiled viewpoint to take. It’s Web 2.0 entitlement. Who said you had to hear every song before the actual thing comes out? Who said there needs to be a constant IV of information, snippet upon snippet, until finally there’s a whole thing made up of the pieces? It adds something, I think, when you go into something blind. Anticipation, maybe. Surprise, whether for good or for bad. But the previews of Katy Carr’s new album “Coquette” were just released, and they’re beyond good.
It’s a theme album, set in the 1940s, and having a theme is an automatic five or so points with me. But there’s still plenty of stylistic variation. “Berliner Ring” and “Army” I’ve already written about, and they’re just as great a year or so later as they were the first time I heard them. On top of that, you have “Kommander’s Car,” the lead single, with just enough playfulness and swagger in the piano not to sink down into the ground, but enough urgency and solemn underpinnings to belie its subject — an escape from Auschwitz. “Sparkle” is spooky, a bit restrained; “Butterfly” alternatingly fluttery and pensive. Then there are “Star Song” and “Sleepyhead,” lovely and lullaby-like, opening and closing the album.
And these are just from 30 seconds or so; 30 seconds of wonderful ambassadorship for the whole thing. It’s staggering how much craft and research has gone into “Coquette.” Just one example: she actually went and contacted Kazimierz Piechowski, the subject of “Kommander’s Car.” That’s going above and beyond. That’s truly caring. And if there’s one thing the world needs, caring would be it. I look forward to hearing it all.
BLOGG 99 from Norway by Guttorm Andreasen
Jeg rekker vel et par tips til før jul, og hvis det er slik at du bare har plass til kanskje en plate til i haugen før jul, synes jeg jammen meg du skal gå for den nye skiva til Katy Carr!
“Couquette” er nydelig kammerpop med flotte stemmer, stemninger og nesten-stevinger. Klokkeklare toner, små, repetive rytmer, en glassklar cello og gjentagende rimkunst. Hele albumet er en slags, men ikke bare, hyllest til tiden da kvinnelige flyvere var Aviatorer og innimellom er jeg sikker på at Caty er der oppe og flyr. Det er få plater jeg har hørt i det siste som passer så perfekt til vinteren og de -12 som er ytenfor stuevinduet på Manglerud akkurat nå. Peis, te og harmonier… Hør gjennom flere ganger, så er du sikker på musikken sitter.
Hør henne før hun blir svær!
English translation….
“I guess I got the time to a couple of album suggestions before Christmas, and if it’s so you only have room for just one more album before Christmas, you should absolutely go for the new Katy Carr album!
“Coquette” is beautifully “chamberpop” with great voices, moods, and near-stev affiliations (I guess Guttorm means the rare combination of your voice and the rythm that gives this almost a Norwegian folksong feeling).
Pure and clear tones, tiny repetive rhythms, the clear sound of the cello and repeating beatufully rhymes.
The whole album is a sort of, but not only, tribute to the time when female pilots were Aviators and and somethimes I’m sure Katy is up there and fly. There are few records I’ve heard lately that fits so perfectly with the winter and -12 degrees Celcius outside my window on Manglerud right now. Fireplace, Tea and harmonies … Listen thru the album several times, so you are sure the music gets to you.
Listen to her before she gets real big!”
Katy’s previous album reviews for ‘Screwing Lies’ [2001] ‘Passion Play’ [2003]
‘Definitely one for the Mercury Prize Jury to consider’
The Times
‘Resonant, if slightly mad, debut by alt – folk star in waiting’
Q ****
‘Second album from English dance-folk prodigy. ’
Uncut ***
‘Out-Bushes Kate’ Metro
‘The DIY ethos of punk is back. Singer-songwriter Katy Carr shun’s the major labels to make music on her own terms . ’
The Friday Review – Feature on Katy Carr in The Independent
‘Katy Carr heralds the arrival of a fresh and unique talent. An eccentric and eclectic writer of sensual and sexy self -penned folk songs, delivered with verve and humour… definitely someone to watch out for…’ Dotmusic
‘At a time when the talentless rule the airwaves, it’s refreshing to hear someone who can actually cut it. ’
Team Satan
‘Odd and brilliant. ’
Mojo ****
‘In the lost land of Paper Castles and white Knights this is huge. Trust me and go and buy yourself a copy! ’
Vice Magazine London
‘Refreshingly theatrical, the balance between light and dark issues is what makes ‘Screwing Lies’ so strong, an interesting new voice.’
Collected sounds
‘An astonishingly fresh début from a promising new talent. Let’s see what Katy can do next.’
Bleedmusic
‘Her natural dulcet tones are stepped in black humour – a real talent.’
TNT
‘Delicate songs, simple songs, clever songs, rewarding songs, songs that float, songs that pull you into their warm web…. rather horny. A fine fine album indeed.’
Organ Magazine
KATY CARR FEATURES….
She’s been compared to Bjork, PJ Harvey and Kate Bush, tipped as a potential nominee for the Mercury Music Prize and championed as a front-runner of the alt-folk scene.
On meeting Katy post-performance, she is diligently working her way through a bowl of strawberries and cream, and she tells me her music is best described as “Eton Mess”.
A seeming muddle of ingredients ‘Mozart, Jethro Tull and bird song’ brought together by a particularly English brand of eccentricity.
The past two years have seen a marked shift in Katy’s influences. With her first albums ‘Screwing Lies’ and ‘Passion Play’ emerging from the British folk scene, Katy noted that she drew inspiration in the “history of 300 to 400 years ago”. One notable example is the tale of highwayman Dick Turpin which formed the basis of the riotously odd duet performed with poet John Hegley.
Recently, however, Katy has found herself writing songs based on conversations with her 94 year old grandmother. Her stories of life in the 30s and 40s inspired a passion in Katy for war-time history and culture. She has also taken up the banjolelee, a hybrid of banjo and ukulele, in order to play her granny’s favourite tunes.
Katy’s brand of eccentric folk is increasingly gaining attention, with a gig at the Royal Opera House on18th July, and a new album due for release in September. Fantastic for those of us who like our music with a “slightly mad” edge but not so great for her boyfriend who was heard lamenting backstage “I’m a folk music widow… can a man be a widow?”
By Serena Sharp
