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Review: Amelia Coburn, the Louisiana – ‘Shapeshifts and enchants’
What happens on the pages between chapters of a dusty, clothbound book? What happens when the projector stops between the scenes of a scratchy black and white film? What happens in the half-asleep as you switch from one dream to the next?
Whatever happens, Middlesborough’s brilliant singer-songwriter Amelia Coburn almost certainly provides the soundtrack.
This is the first time that Coburn has ever been to Bristol, stopping off as part of a tour that is between her first album, Between the Moon and the Milkman, and her unrecorded second one.
If there’s a sense of betwixt and between, then it’s one that speaks of fluidity and growth, of exploring the cracks and finding treasure.
Coburn is a literate folk-goth, her songs flicker in the moonlight, they look longingly through the mist.
Nodding Dog, taken from her debut album, is all crushed velvet and music box rhythms. It might be about the pitfalls of Tinder in a small town but it could, equally, have been written about the fools you might find gathered around an ancient market-square.
She has an eye for the moments in time that travel up and down rather than side-to-side.
‘Her songs flicker in the moonlight’ – Coburn’s evening at brilliant indie venue the Louisiana was her first ever stop in Bristol
See-Saw also has the distorted plinks of a haunted music-box until it bursts into a Spanish swirl and some neon splashed psych keyboards.
Le Fabuleux Destin de Sandra is a glorious Francophile version of Sandra, from the album. It is draped with the elegance of a chanteuse, she is a noir-ish nightclub singer in black and white, full of celluloid glimmer.
There are moments when Coburn’s folky roots show through. When The Tide Rolls In is an acoustic romp, sea-tossed and Romantic (with a capital R).
Her voice is a wonderful thing, high and full of yearning. It calls to mind Julianne Regan of All About Eve, another literate folk-goth, and has the same ability to melt hearts.
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If the new songs are anything to go by, then album number two could be a lesson in classic singer-songwriting.
Just Wanna Say is delightfully upbeat, driven by cardboard-box drums and Coburn’s voice. Metamorphosis, another example of that literary bent, has a Cure-like, wardrobe-off-a-cliff dreaminess and some Syd Barrett wordplay alongside subtle heartbeat drums.
For Wine at Your Funeral Coburn is Irene Adler, skewering hearts with the flick of a stiletto, she has the biting wit of Dorothy Parker set to a tune heaped with sass.
Then This Body’s Yours to Keep has a Wicker Man spookiness, a brittle unease that oozes folk-horror like the mist on a forest floor.
By the time Perfect Storm rages, Amelia Coburn is in full Beatles kaftan-psych mode, drones and chiming strings weave paisley patterns around some perfect late 60s folk-rock.
Whatever can be found in the worlds in between, Coburn knows exactly how to summon those spirits, exactly how to tell the stories. She shapeshifts and enchants.
Read more of Gavin’s writing at tallfolk.substack.com
All images: Gavin McNamara
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