Sunday, October 11, 2020

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: KYLIE FOX - GREEN

 


Kylie Fox is one of the artists up for this year's Music New Brunswick Awards, being handed out as part of the annual Festival 506. This year it's online, being held from Oct. 22 to Oct. 25. Apart from the conference, fans can listen to the nominees and vote for their favourites at https://www.musicnb.org/en/programs/prix-mnb-awards/2020-nominees. Fox is up for the SOCAN Song Of The Year award for "Cradle Me" and for the Fan's Choice Award as well.

"Cradle Me" comes from her brand-new album, called Green. It's her first full-length release, after the 2017 EP Balcony. That set introduced her refreshing, wide-open songwriting, disarmingly plain-spoken about her life and the folks and friends around her. She was still an emerging artist at that point, but now has a fully-developed sound, and a fully-produced album thanks to ECMA Award-winner Dale Murray. Smartly, Fox's vocals dominate, as she is a confident and strong singer, with a quirky warble that sets her apart. Murray adds lots of subtle percussion, strings and pauses to her folk-acoustic music, leaving lots of room for her voice to soar.

What makes Fox such a stand-out writer is her ability to write about normal events and feelings in a completely fresh way. "Avocado" is about a friend's pregnancy, when the baby-to-be reaches a stage where they are roughly the size of the titular fruit."Cool Feet" is a love song composed for two friends, what the guy misses about his g-friend when she's not there. "This Beer" is about the Moosehead always offered to anyone from Saint John when they are somewhere else in Canada. And she's especially frank about her own life, where not much is sacred, as heard in "Horny and Bored."

You can catch Kylie Fox in concert (if Covid restrictions stay the same) in Fredericton at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, on Oct. 30. Opening will be Jerry-Faye, with limited, social-distanced seating available.

No comments:

Post a Comment