The third new release featured this week is Kendall Jane Meade’s cathartic break-up album, Space.
One July morning back in 2000, I was driving to work and the WXDU morning DJ (it might have been Kate, it might have been Georg) played a track so beautiful that I pulled the car off the road to listen, and called the station as soon as it ended. It was the title track from a record called Follow the Sound, by a band called Mascott with two t’s. When I got to work, I think I ordered the CD before I’d even poured my first cup of coffee.
Mascott was, essentially Meade’s solo project after leaving her first band, Juicy. The LP was produced by, among others, Jim O’Rourke, and it remains one of life’s great mysteries why it didn’t make her a star.
But the music industry is cruel. A couple of self-released records followed over the next decade, but since 2008 her output has been an EP, a duet LP with Anders Parker, and grab bag of covers, including a John Prine tribute EP.
Until about 2 years ago when she dropped the heartbreak single Heaven on a Car Ride. It’s taken a lot longer than I had hoped for the full length to hit the shelves, but that finally happened last week. Eight original tracks, plus a blow-you-away cover of Sandy Denny’s composition Solo. (Kendall’s taste in covers has always been exquisite. Her take on Kirsty MacColl’s They Don’t Know is the best one out there). Happy to feature the revisited version of Heaven on a Car Ride tonight, and more to come in the next few weeks. Maybe KJM’s rediscovered love of playing out will see her in a venue near you this year. Go see her if you have the chance
Listen/buy here
sounds of the sea 