Granted the ragtime and folk-blues influences in Ruth Theodore’s quirky, highly original songs, it was perhaps to be expected that she would quit Hackney to record her latest album on the US west coast. Her producer is Todd Sickafoose, who has worked with Anaïs Mitchell, and there’s a dash of Americana in this, Theodore’s most accessible and confident album to date. It starts in fairly conventional style, with jaunty, tuneful songs that show off her acrobatic vocals and instrumental skill, as she switches from guitar and piano to harmonica, with backing from strings and trumpet. Later she changes mood and pace, introducing jazz piano and backing vocals on the slow, thoughtful The Carcass and the Pride, and showcasing her lyrical skills on Man of the Land, an extraordinary, half-spoken, rapid-fire piece that somehow covers the story of creation, Icarus, birds and war.
