Artist: Mary Hampton
Release: Folly
Discogs: 2941294
Released: 2011-06-15
Label: Teaspoon Records
Catalog#: TSR001
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue / CD
Country: UK
Style: Folk, World, & Country, Folk

Tracklisting:

01. The Man Behind The Rhodedendron
02. Benjamin Bowmaneer
03. Forget-me-not
04. Kiss V
05. Hoax And Benison
06. Honey In The Rock
07. No. 32
08. Lullaby For The Beleaguered



A hush and a hurtle down the wrong end of a telescope, a slip and a trip through the cracks in the pavement, to somewhere removed from here, yet strangely familiar. Tales like this abound in English folklore; those half-worlds of quiet darkness, uncanny and uncomfortable. I’m aware I sound like a pretentious prick, but I promise you – that story, the one about the world glimpsed out of the corner of your eye in the mirror, that story is what Mary Hampton’s music most resembles.

So now you’re thinking Tinkerbell and glitterwings, floaty velvet scarves and dream catchers. Rainbows. Unicorns. Bat For Lashes. Please don’t. Hampton creates art that is timeless, seasonless and genderless. It’s steeped in history and rooted in the Sussex downs and pebbled beaches, yet is also completely of the present and gleefully inventive. There are no histrionics, only an intense calm. But the calm isn’t restful, it’s anticipatory, like a hush in the air before the rain. When Hampton sings, her mouth twists into ugly shapes. Beauty is not simple and it is never painless.

On Folly, Hampton’s second album, her sound is developed and honed. Her band Cotillion come into their own and instrumentation is used exploratively and to great effect – off-kilter trumpet, steam pipes, violin, piano, cello, double-bass and accordion all feature. Most notably Hampton’s voice is treated as just another instrument used to build up a brittle storm lantern of considered noise. Every song has been perfectly shaped so that there’s no question that each one is the definitive version. Take ‘Benjamin Bowmaneer’, a 17th Century folk song performed under various names for almost 300 years, most recently by Eliza Carthy. Mary Hampton’s version is the correct version. It just is.