Caroline Weeks – Songs For Edna

Apologies for starting with a great big sentence of evidently reworded Wikipedia - you might think it's a cheap and easy way of fleshing out an album that doesn't really suit lengthy analysis, and you'd be dead right - but it's important to get the context out of the way first. Thomas Hardy once said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay (1892-1950) was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, a highly lyrical and sensitive writer whose work dealt with issues of feminism, friendship and sexuality. Songs For Edna sees Caroline Weeks, multi-instrumentalist and lynchpin of Bat For Lashes' live band, put nine of her poems to music. You've probably guessed what style these songs will be in already.Actually, quite apart from her sidewoman status Weeks is revealed as having a pure, very English folk voice of the type channelled by Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton and Anne Briggs, most recently exemplified in the gothic fairytales of Weeks' fellow Brightonian Mary Hampton. It's all very minimal, almost entirely backed solely by smoky, spare fingerpicked acoustic the better to let the words stand out, while Weeks is hopeful and beckoning on lonesome love song 'What Lips My Lips Have Kissed', yearning on 'Wild Swans', joined by a male harmony vocalist on the breathy, dreamy 'The Return', actively creepy dropping her voice a tone for 'Pity Me Not'. The language is emotive and pastoral, and for all the spiritual profundity and allusiveness in Millay's work you'll hear far more outre/outmoded use of language in the Joanna Newsom back catalogue.Very much a late night listen, clearly part of Weeks' intentions with this project is to increase modern interest in Millay's works, but however touching, intimate and largely spellbinding Songs For Edna is, albeit quite one-paced in its sparseness, its intentions work against it. The mind can't help but bring up the other end of the deal, in that you'd really now want to know what Weeks could do given a blank sheet of paper and lessons learnt from taking in this collection. 71%Caroline Weeks on Myspace