Catherine Irwin’s folk is conditioned acoustic defiance. She is defiant of singing of love as merely pleasure, and of speed as necessary for heat. Little Heater is her second complete album and she is currently producing them at the rate of one a decade. This is notably respectable because in the intervening period she refused the offer of several inappropriate labels, preferring instead to wait for the good ol’ right one that let her do her own thing. She is presented as a gothic folk singer and it’s very much the case that her music communicates an overall sadness, more mournful than playful although the occasional frolicsome yodel competes to compliment the pathos and gives a strong indication of warm humour.
Bittersweet opener “Banks of the Ohio” sets the tone for the album. Little Heateris comprehensive in its dealings with most prominent aspects of folk love; deceit, pain, loneliness and ultimately murder. The majority of the originals on the album are stories in song form and she imprints her character strongly from the Banks. The colour of heartache is good folk and bad gin. The geographical quality of Catherine’s voice, tender and lonesome, is such that it’s troublesome to imagine her playing anywhere but bars in the deep American west, watched by men of all colours of lament. Indeed during several songs, she seems genuinely close to some sort of break down and the necessity of folk to singing about her experiences is profoundly touching.
Tara Jane O’Neil’s proximate recording gives all of the songs a tangibly organic feeling and being able to discern the low E vibrating on “Pale Rider” is lovely in its rarity. In “To Break Your Heart” something lighter than the heavy chords present would have been more appropriate, but there is a slide riff that’s reminiscent of one of Zeppelin’s; it’s beautifully mellifluous. Thematically, style trumps morality and her cover of “Sinner Saves the Saint” ignores calling out God’s name despite her teasing his creations. “Sinner Saves the Saint” presents Catherine’s greatest talent which is to be mournful whilst also affecting and the difficulty of this should not be understated. However certain harmonies veer off key during choruses and there are several songs where her tendency to sacrifice the precision of lyrics in preference for the overall pathos of the song might annoy some.
Little Heater is full of mature beauty and very much worth a decade’s wait.
Release: 17th September 2012, Thrill Jockey
