Eliza Carthy

It's not so long ago that Eliza Carthy was England's folkbabe. Pierced, changing hair color every month, she was the poster girl for an emerging youthful folk scene. Her adventurous 1998 album, Red Rice, saw her nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize, mixing traditional English songs and rock in a thoroughly modern way.

But the Eliza Carthy of 2001 is showing a new side. Older and wiser at 25, her new record, Angels & Cigarettes, is Eliza the singer-songwriter, and she's very happy to add the new skill to her resume.

"The thing about singing other people's songs is that they don't necessarily truly express the things you want to say. They can convey things you want to say, and you agree with the songs and change them, so there's a certain amount of songwriting involved with performing traditional songs, but it's not a statement of pure self. It's never going to be entirely about your experiences."

"I've just taken up the bagpipes..."

While there's a remarkably blunt honesty about songs like "Breathe," which deals with the problem of living with asthma, and "In The Company Of Men," she isn't cloaked in rage, like Alanis Morrissette redux, although she admiited that "the songs on the album aren't the most vitriolic I came up with. I was extraordinarily angry and particularly upset about this relationship, and it became clear to me while I was making the album that I'd moved on. I also realized I didn't want to make that kind of record. I don't have that big chip on my shoulder any more. It works for some people, but it can be too much - there are things you don't want to know about people. I think Alanis Morrissette went as far as you can go, and she suffered for it afterward. You can't just be an artist, you have to be a broken artist."

For those who know her from her previous work, in addition to her participation in Waterson:Carthy, the traditional group she has with parents Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, the album will be something of a shock. It's far more pop - there's even a cover of Paul Weller's "Wildwood," and her fiddle playing is less obviously in evidence.

"I was very conscious of that," she explained. "When I toured with Joan Baez I realized I don't pretty up the breaks, I'm not a virtuoso. It's not about exhibitionism for me, but creating a texture. I arranged and played all the strings on that album except for the two songs Van Dyke Parks did. I spent so much time thinking about it and how I could complement the songs. This is a songwriting album. It's another new skill, and I see my violin playing as another part of that. The role of the violin in pop music is very intrinsic - there's always a strong section there, but you don't notice me. But I thought ‘Ah! These people don't write their own string arrangements, but I do.' Maybe the violin will be more front on the next album. I want to find a way of making it bloody obvious that I am a violin player as well. I don't want to downplay half of what I do!"

And she even co-opted her father onto the album, to play electric guitar on "Whole" - an instrument he rarely gets to tinker with.

"That was the producer, Al Scott. He got really cheeky, pulled out a vintage Les Paul, and suggest my dad play that. The bit we used, which is the tiniest sample, came from this beautiful fingerpicked riff. We caught it, and said ‘Play that all the way through,' and he couldn't do it again! So we chopped it up, looped him, and we laughed. But he loves it. For a while"Whole" was going to be the single. For him the idea that he was on 2 seconds worth of sound on an electric guitar, sampled, looped made him so happy!"

While Carthy made her name as a champion of English music, these days her performances with her own band rarely feature anything traditional, although "we want to work on incorporating traditional material into the songs. When you hear Asian music the traditional instruments are in the background, and you can hear the influences. I want to express an English version of that in the pop music I do, because I think it makes me unique, and that's very important."

Her traditional outlet remains Waterson:Carthy, whose new record is due at the end of 2001, and might which will certainly offer some new facets, because "we have a new accordion player (Tim van Eyken), and I've just taken up the bagpipes, so we've got a bit of a new sound nowadays. They're not Scottish bagpipes. They're Leicestershire small pipes, researched and developed by a pipemaker who lives close to me, from old church carvings. They have a lovely sound; he makes the reeds out of yogurt pots!"

Eliza Carthy

"I've just taken up the bagpipes..."

Related Articles in the 'UK & Irish Aritsts' Category...