Smoke Fairies

Really liked this new a- and b-side compilation of Smoke Fairies singles. They’re a two-girl, folk-blues outfit, who sing really lovely harmonies and play some pretty mean slide guitar. They’re also pretty enough that when they accosted Jack Black a couple of years ago in a bar with CDR in hand, he not only took the CD but played it. And the CD was good enough that he recorded with them. So there, forget what your mother told you about talking to strange men in bars.

Here’s a bit from my Smoke Fairies review, up today at Dusted.

Smoke Fairies have a tendency toward preciousness, which sometimes glosses their tracks like Enya productions. The best cuts, in contrast, have a bit of the rough to them, murky textures of slide guitar, side-slipping vocal slurs and slides. “Living with Ghosts,” the track that caught Jack White’s attention (he has since recorded a single with Smoke Fairies on Third Man Records), is the standout here. Full of banked heat and smoldered slides, its singing is pitched lower, with a bruised vulnerability that is almost entirely unadorned by trills and frippery. There’s a bit of acoustic Zeppelin tucked in here, an ominous sense that the cut could turn operatically rock but is held in check.

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“Living with Ghosts”


“Gastown”