The history of British supermodels in music is not an illustrious one. From Naomi Campbell’s questionable 1994 R&B outing Baby Woman to Kate Moss playing a pallid Bardot to Pete Doherty’s cut-price Gainsbourg on Babyshambles’ La Belle et la Bête in 2005, the road from magazine advertorial to musical legacy is full of potholes.
Karen Elson, however, has been gleefully bucking trends all her life. The teen nicknamed “the ghost who walks” at school and feted by Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld as a “mixture of something from the middle ages and a mutant from another planet” is still in demand 20 years later, while carving out an authentic career as a singer-songwriter too.
In 2010, Elson made her first album, named after that school days sobriquet and produced by her then-husband, Jack White. Seven years on, the marriage is history and so, too, are the American roots-stylings and murder-ballad theme of her debut, replaced by the Laurel Canyon-meets-Haworth moor sound and intimate rumination of recently released follow-up, Double Roses.
The album shimmers with loss, regret and newfound freedom and finds Elson at her most confident and beguiling. But although the 38-year-old cuts an assured figure as she steps on the stage in a long, black, fitted dress and gracefully pulls on an acoustic guitar, her repeatedly pressed-together lips and hesitant glances at her seven-strong band betray doubt. “How are you?” she asks the expectant crowd, her smile broad but voice timid. “Fabulous?”
Once the delicate strains of a sizable harp begin, Elson puts her game face on and unleashes her warm, breathy voice – which has notably grown in beauty and strength – over the very English, flute-adorned folk of Wonder Blind. She immerses herself in the spectral loveliness of Double Roses, with its nagging harpsichord, and closes her eyes to quietly recite the Sam Shepard poem that ends the song and gave her album its name. Having spent a lifetime assuming guises, Elson is just as seductive at playing the siren on a saxophone-driven version of Donovan’s Season of the Witch, her hands wafting into the air and through her flame-red hair as, guitar-free, she moves to the pulsating psychedelia.
It’s a tantalising hint of what direction Elson might go in next, but for now she seamlessly blends gothic blues such as The Ghost Who Walks and The Thief at My Door with ethereal pop gems Distant Shore and Call Your Name. Even when, as in The End, it’s hard not to read into Elson’s very personal songs details of her equally public life, her grace and talent overcome speculation. Yet her nerves persist. “So far, so good?” she asks.
Roy Harper’s Another Day allows Elson to hide behind someone else’s pain, yet she’s most mesmerising when voicing her own experience, especially on the last song, Wolf. And despite singing the line “I admit defeat”, Elson’s latest pose is a genuine triumph.
- At Rough Trade East, London, on 14 April. Box office: 020-7392 7788.
