Rummage through those racks of records looking for that mysterious mark of quality. That undefined thing that makes a man part with his money. Something other than a ten dollar hooker anyway…
This single from the Smoke Fairies - Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies – is on Jack White’s Third Man label so the mark of quality is truly upon it. What has also been marked upon it, I hear you ask? Well, a curiously ethereal and timeless sound. You’d guess that “Gastown” was influenced as much by the west coast of America in the early seventies as it was by Shelagh McDonald or Sandy Denny but you’d be hard put to place the song precisely in a timeframe. “River Song”, on the other hand, merely feigns the timelessness of the best in folk music before adding a big dash of the Doors and topping it with a great big cherry of unanticipated vocal majesty. Someone somewhere ought to make a movie just so these two songs could be on the soundtrack.
As James Brown once put it – I feel good, I knew that I would.