Shelley Short again

I’ve been away all day, down in Northampton, nice day, nothing very reportable about it. Meanwhile, Blurt’s run my review of Shelley Short’s A Cave, a Canoo, which I enjoyed very much, albeit in a low-key way. I said:

Shelley Short makes simplicity look easy. Her gentle, minimally accompanied songs sound like they might have been composed on the spot, sung in a near-whisper so as not to wake the young ones up and recorded directly on the collective memory. Her soft voice flutters effortlessly over quick flights of melody and slides languorously into sustained notes, not a hint of artifice glinting through. Her guitar playing is soft and unassuming, a string of lovely notes left to hang in the air. Her lyrics touch obliquely on everyday natural images, often drawing the connections to love, life, death and memory through ellipsis and understatement.

The rest

“Time Machine/Submarine”

I’ve put this mp3 up before, but if you didn’t catch it, here it is again.

Blurt has also got another live review of the Lightning Dust/Cave Singers tour up today. Whose do you think it better, eh? (Don’t answer that, I don’t really want to know.)

Jud Cost’s


Mine

Shelley Short

I’ve been enjoying the very quiet, very beautiful fourth CD from Portland’s Shelley Short. It’s called A Cave, A Canoo, and it’s coming out on Hush Records (who had the Decemberists before they got noticed) in October. Ms. Short has a voice as sleepy soft as puppy fur – she might remind you a little bit of Casey Dienel – but there’s a kind of jazzy sophistication underneath it. Nicely done…here’s the free mp3 from her website. It’s called “Time Machine/Submarine”.



There are some other mp3s from earlier CDs here as well.