Ríona Sally Hartman - Big Starving Thing (2015)

Tracklist

01. Handholding
02. Show Me
03. Frida Kahlo's Delight
04. Same but Better
05. Broken Woman
06. Kamikaze
07. Sea Legs
08. Daises
09. Screamer



Dubliner Ríona Sally Hartman is capable of using her voice like an instrument, but she is a writer too, interested in the observations and speculations of the poet.

Her finely-crafted debut album unites the musician and the songwriter, drawing water from many wells, from folk and jazz to alt pop and contemporary lieder.

Her songs unfold like a series of magic realist short stories, pungently told and peopled by loners and weirdos: a lovelorn peeping Tom; an insomniac fortune teller; a Frida Kahlo-obsessed fish.

Yet even as the subject matter challenges and perplexes, the craft of the songs draws you in – delicate vocal harmonies and sparse acoustic settings, fresh and uncliched, perhaps bearing most comparison with intrepid New York singers like Theo Bleckmann and Becca Stevens.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]