Charlotte Martin loves to give. Rarities-6 is the final part of a 6 piece almost single like set of unreleased materials. Having only been able to buy the first 5 on tours, the last one was made available to buy online. HPM will now be officially campaigning to get the other 5 released online – these are fantastic!
“Shrink” reminds me of a cross between very early electric CharMar and Stromata’s era, almost like a crossing bridge over between the two. It’s catchy, full of neat embellishments and a little bit of funkiness to it too.
“Dangled” is a piano/vocal track and features some beautiful trademark layered vocals and ever rising and soaring choruses. There is real attention to little pace changes in this track and its what makes it much more punchy and emotional than your usual singer/songwriter stuff. Add to that Charlotte’s blood-on-your-sleeves vocals and you have a tremendous combo.
Finally “No Words” reminds me of the work from “Orphans” and has a great sparseness and emptiness to it and all the keyboards have a harsh coldness to them. Combined with Martin doing a lazy slur over the verses and then giving it welly in the choruses it makes for a great end to the trio.
Obviously big Charlotte Martin fans should be the target audience for these mini-cd’s and everyone should lap these tracks up but each song is so strong, you could easily use this as a starting point for getting into her music too.
Now please can we have the rest released? Please?