Preview: Gwyneth Herbert - The Sea Cabinet - Sage Gateshead Wednesday June 12

Gwyneth Herbert released her new album The Sea Cabinet, on the 20th May 2013. 

The Sea Cabinet, the singer’s sixth album and her first in three years, was launched with four nights at Wilton’s Music Hall – the oldest surviving music hall in the world. 

Her subsequent tour, her first in four years, will start at Sage Gateshead and culminate in a show at Snape Maltings, where the whole project was conceived and recorded. A second tour has already been confirmed for the autumn.

Gwyneth Herbert may be only 31, but the singer and songwriter had already lived several lives when she decamped from her Dalston flat for a week in a Suffolk cottage as part of an artistic residency with Aldeburgh Music. Evenings were dedicated to midnight seaside walks, including a trip to the drowned village of Dunwich, and befriending fishermen in the local tavern. Days, meanwhile, were spent at the piano, down the road in Snape Maltings. She was nursing a broken heart, and – the finishing touch – it was blowing such a gale that she was forced to play in fingerless gloves.

Gwyneth emerged from her week in Aldeburgh with a spectacular concept album: The Sea Cabinet. ‘The songs weave themselves around the imagined story of a woman who walks the beach every day alone,’ she explains, ‘picking up all the discarded and washed up objects and taking them home, logging them with archeological rigour. She keeps them in a shack: her "sea cabinet." These items are kind of semaphore signals and each one resonates with the memory of a secret sea-set story.’

A full decade after her debut album First Songs, The Sea Cabinet finds Gwyneth at her most mature as a writer.  The songs, inspired by the Suffolk coast, are timeless and immersive. And the album, knitted together by field recordings, is as unbroken as a shoreline. The Sea Cabinet calls to mind English folk artists from Jacqui McShee to Tunng. There are also touches of Joni Mitchell in Mingus mode, Edith Piaf and the leftfield pop of Psapp, not to mention Ray Davies and Mara Carlyle. Gwyneth herself says would put the record on the shelf marked bluesyfolkypoppyjazzystorysongs – but, as on the album itself, she’s only half-serious.

‘I like music that stokes a fire in your belly, starts a storm in your brain, punches you in the face and tickles you under the chin at the same time,’ she says. ‘The Sea Cabinet may be a concept album, but I don’t want it to sound like I’ve got my head stuck up my arse. I want the experience of listening to it to be fun – because we had so much fun making it. Like the song of faded seaside hotel The Regal slips into the melodica refrain of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside. It's whimsy that takes itself seriously.’

Album centrepiece  Fishguard Ladies takes its inspiration from the late 18th century, when, legend has it, a handful of local Welsh women headed off an invading French fleet by flashing their red petticoats. They were apparently mistaken for British Grenadiers. Alderney, by contrast, tells the chilling story of the Channel Island following its occupancy by Nazis during World War Two. Elsewhere we have the tender chamber folk of The Regal and, in Drink, a rum-soaked sea shanty.  Alongside pop artist Fiona Bevan who collaborates on I Still Hear the Bells and The King’s Shilling, the album also features Gwyneth herself on piano and ukulele, multi-instrumentalist folk duo The Rubber Wellies and her regular band: Al Cherry (guitars), Sam Burgess (bass) and David Price (percussion, strings and co-production).

Gwyneth is relishing the fact that, in 2013, a musician’s artistic remit can – and should – extend well beyond the music Gwyneth is relishing the fact that, in 2013, a musician’s artistic remit can – and should – extend well beyond the music itself. Crowd-funded and self-released, with shows (at The Sage, Love Supreme and Snape Maltings) that feature prose, multiple voices and live cymatic projections, The Sea Cabinet is the most ambitious project she has ever attempted. And she is, she says, more creatively fulfilled than ever. 

THE SEA CABINET:

"one of the most beguiling collections of songs you'll hear this year" 4/5 JAZZWISE

"a precious find - a fluid fusion of music, art, storytelling and film inspired by solitary shoreline walks, nautical trinkets and tales from the deep blue sea." VOGUE

"delightfully whimsical" THE TIMES

"Each of the songs is an impressively crafted, well-observed and engrossing vignette....  Simply a triumph" 5/5 MORNING STAR

"a cabaret approach to storytelling…a cabinet of curiosities" 4/5 INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

"a manner of modernised Music Hall, awash with ukelele and melodica" 4/5 THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"an entertaining and often moving show that opens a new chapter in her creative story" 4/5 THE GUARDIAN

"an audacious, sometimes riotous sound to frequently thrill to" MARLBANK

"In its lovingly-produced completeness, this album is a work of art" CRY ME A TORCH SONG

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/second-life-what-happens-when-next-big-things-fail-to-hit-the-big-time-8567681.html

http://www.thejazzmann.com/news/article/gwyneth-herbert-new-album-and-uk-tour

Tour dates

May
23rd - 26th: Sea Cabinet Album Launch Extravaganza, London, Wiltons Music Hall – http://wiltons.org.uk/event.php?p=573

June
12th - Gateshead, The Sage - http://thesagegateshead.org/event/gwyneth-herbert/
14th - Altrincham, Cinnamon Club - https://www.quaytickets.com/cinnamon/Online/default.asp
15th - Wiltshire, The Wiltshire Jazz Festival -

“Sparky, imaginative writing.  A series of twilight characters is unveiled in melodic, acoustic arrangements, full of shifting textures and moods,  Her singing is classy throughout…”  Mojo

“’All The Ghosts’ is the assertion of a highly personal musical voice, with shifting metres, contrasting backgrounds, and lyrics that actually mean something.” **** Jazzwise

 "There's a lovely sense of britishness about this girl, not only is she a talent vocally but a strong songstress too." 8/10 Blues & Soul

“Herbert’s most varied and engaging piece of personal storytelling yet.”  **** The Guardian 

 “Beautiful, vaguely jazzy, keenly observed vignettes… super-talented” **** The Daily Telegraph

“Herbert remains tricky to categorise but fantastically easy to warm to.” **** Metro

 "Builds on the charming, lo-fi, folk-pop of her lauded  'Between Me And The Wardrobe’ - plenty of memorable hooks and witty one-liners."  Time Out

 "If Hanns Eisler had been a woman and written with Ray Davies, he might have come up with something like this.."  Independent On Sunday

“a warm sultry take on acoustic folk and pop." The Daily Mail

"set to be a major sound this summer" Stella

 “Full of shifting tempos and textures.  Classic Bowie-like pop, belting blues and gorgeous jazz. The Times

"delightfully diverse and unpredictable" ALBUM OF THE WEEK Sunday Mercury

GWYNETH HERBERT – Between Me And The Wardrobe (BLUE NOTE) 2007:

"Halfway between Janis Ian and Susanna And The Magical Orchestra"

*****

OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY

"Introspective and wistful"

**** RECORD COLLECTOR

"An impressive, at times moving album which defies and genre pigeon-holing - Ms Herbert could yet be up there with the artists she truly admires"

JAZZWISE

"Brilliantly original, full of space and isolated detail."

Mojo Rising

MOJO

"Personal, witty, urbane, unpredictable and full of subtly poetic narrative that stands up on its own terms without recourse to genre conventions."

****

BBC MUSIC MAG

"Warm melodies, honeyed vocals and brilliant observational lyrics."

****DIVA

"Her exquisite, pure toned voice hovers between moodiness and rapture."

**** CITY LIFE

"Dark and moody balladry gives way to Jacques Brel-esque excitement throughout"

JAZZ REVIEW

"Herbert’s originals connect more with Janis Ian or Rufus Wainwright than the standards the subtly intelligent Herbert at first seemed destined for."

THE GUARDIAN

"The pensive numbers that dominate here similarly come out of the Joni Mitchell end of the repertoire"

THE SUNDAY TIMES

"Gwyneth Herbert’s guileless, low-budget album has emerged one of this year’s word-of-mouth hits, with Herbert poised as one of Britain’s brightest young talents."

THE TELEGRAPH

"a set of very personal songs on which she often sounds closer to Sandy Denny 

than Sarah Vaughn. "

THE TIMES

"many of these songs are compacted narrative jewels. Full of unexpected and highly rewarding details. Recommended"

BBC ONLINE

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/second-life-what-happens-when-next-big-things-fail-to-hit-the-big-time-8567681.html

http://www.marlbank.net/post/49363566776/i-must-go-down-to-the-seas-again-to-the-lonely-sea

http://www.thejazzmann.com/news/article/gwyneth-herbert-new-album-and-uk-tour/

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