Reviews
Artist:Cara Ludlow Album: Hyperion
Label: Ty Cerdd
Tracks: 3
Website: https://caraludlow.bandcamp.com/releases
Welsh singer songwriter Cara Ludlow says of her debut release. "The EP is a reflection on fragility and resilience, innocence and experience. In a more opaque way, it's a homage to a poem called The Fall Of Hyperion: A Dream by John Keats. Many pieces of my private and poetic self are buried in these songs."
The songs themselves are as much poems as lyrics. In 'Blue' she looks at a failed relationship with honesty. "I thought that this was love. But I fell for someone else's charms any chance I'd get. You were more my child than my love in the end." It isn't a surprise to find that she gives Bob Dylan, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen as influences. Songwriters with as she puts it "a big streak of poetry in their songs." 'Berlin' certainly has a flavour of Cohen about it.
The songs were originally written just for her voice and her excellent fingerpicked guitar. The songs are turned into something otherworldly by the playing of the Mavron String Quartet, however. The sound and feel have been compared to Nick Drake's 'Five Leaves Left,' and that isn't far off. Keeping her voice front and centre of the mix was entirely the right thing to do, and Ludlow and Producer James Clarke have done a great job allowing the songs to speak for themselves rather than add to the basic guitar, voice, strings template. Her voice is easily strong enough to carry the sparse arrangement. If you want points of comparison then there are flashes of Joan Armatrading and Alison Krauss at times, which goes to show the range of Ludlow's singing. She delivers the songs in a conversational tone that focuses on the story she wants to get across rather than performing them and losing the warmth that is a huge part of the appeal of this record.
Hopefully, she will have the chance to take these songs to a stage soon, and it will be interesting to hear how the songs translate to live performance. She has shared a stage in the past with Gibraltarean singer Gabriel Moreno who writes in a similarly poetic style. She says in an interview on her record company website that she has "a lot of different ambitions and ideas about music." Which is good news because it means we can look forward to more from her, hopefully soon.
Tim Martin
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