Mollie Marriott
The Truth Is A Wolf
MITA Records
The interesting thing about Mollie to me is that she seems to dig deep and sing in a bluesy way without aping black female singers. This means the notes don’t get twisted every which way, as the horrific ‘soul’ singers on X Factor etc tend to be steered. Mollie hits the notes and makes them count. Indeed on the opening cut ‘Broken’ with its warm electric piano and steady drumming the delivery is like Elkie Brooks, an octave up.
‘Transformer’ mines a dirtier blues sound, again with a clear vocal. The ethereal slow-burn funk of ‘Love Your Bones’ has intertwining minor chords whilst ‘Ship of Fools’ goes for a brisk Muscle Shoals style mood, with a story lyric and heavy Free influence. The psych intro to ‘King of Hearts’ flows into a stealthy blues tread minus any grandstanding. An aching sadness runs through ‘Give Me A Reason’.an introspective ballad. Title track ‘The Truth Is A Wolf’ is a steady rocker with an ace vocal and amp tremelo’d guitar. Sustained guitar notes haunt ‘My Heaven Can Wait’. Final number ‘Gravity’ has sombre beauty equalling any Sandy Denny masterwork.
Only criticism? A preponderance of sad songs. A few bouncier cuts would balance things up. Not that this stops the maudlin Adele from flogging her albums!
Pete Sargeant
Mollie Marriott’s album ‘Truth Is A Wolf’ is released by MITA Records in February 2016. For more information visit Mollie’s website here: http://bit.ly/1Scqag
(Feature Image credited to Kieran White at KW Media. Thanks Cat)
