Underneath The Stars
I first heard Kate Rusby when Sleepless was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Since then I've seen her in concert several times and bought most of her albums. She's an artist I tend to have long breaks from then come back to and remember why I love so much - here's why.
Kate Rusby has one of those properly lovely voices that means you could listen to her sing pretty much anything. That can create a few problems in that everything is so beautifully sung there's no real distinction between anything - no big shifts in vocal colour or dynamic. The great thing about Kate's music is that she's assembled a series of bands that create such a wealth of colour and dynamic it (almost) makes up for it. Revolving around the multi-instrumentalist John McCusker and, more recently Ian Carr (who has to be one of the greatest guitarists on the planet for his general disregard of the boundaries of rhythm, melody and accompaniment as mutually exclusive facets of the instrument), Kate's bands continually drag your ear around with a wilful love of syncopation, gentle harmonic playfulness and endlessly shifting textures. It's incredible stuff.
I do occasionally find myself wishing Kate had a bit more variety to her voice (especially when she's singing those wonderful storytelling lyrics folksong is riddled with) but the way she sings is beautiful and loved my thousands of people so who am I to have any complaints (I'm one of the people who love it after all).
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