The Memory Band - Apron Strings

DiCristina Stair Builders
Released: 10.10.06

I used to be a music sexist. Few women had voices that I liked and I usually thought their music was cheaply sentimental. For a while in high school I had a Tori Amos thing, but that was about the piano and the grinding. And the Breeders were about a post-Pixies thing. There just weren't many women out there whose voices could move me. Then something happened and I wasn't a bigot anymore. It might have been Chan Marshall. Regardless, I now find myself excited about Jolie Holland and Feist, and rediscovering Janis Ian has been inspirational.

I bring this up because, while The Memory Band is a Stephen Cracknell project, his voice quivers in the wrong way for me, but Nancy Wallace's voice has me putting down whatever book I'm reading and paying attention. To Cracknell's credit, he's written some great songs for Apron Strings. The acoustic guitars move in ways heavily influenced by folk, but often they're a little more aggressive than most folk music. The violin and viola round out their sound, adding slippery rhythms. You don't even need vocals on most of these tracks. "Blackwaterside," the opening song, proves that immediately with hippie drums and a violin that lives in Irish Sea, somewhere between Ireland and England of a past century. "Brambles" is completely hypnotic with repetitive guitars and drums lulling you into nothingness just before Wallace's voice on "Green Grows the Laurel" perks your ears back up.

Apron Strings feels deeply sincere. I occasionally find myself scoffing at the lyrics, especially those of the traditional songs "Green Grows the Laurel" and "I Wish I Wish," but it's hard to deny their musical depth and beauty. The emotional simplicity of "Evil" makes me wonder if my occasional scoff isn't a result of my not understanding the place some of these songs come from. There's something about proclaiming someone as "evil, yes you are" while a slow guitar ponders the loss of that person that shows a lived maturity that doesn't mind if the listener can totally sympathize with the words as long as he can feel where the music itself comes from.

-Matt Thompson