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Album Review

Nancy Elizabeth
Battle and Victory The Leaf Label

Article written by James S - Oct 6, 2007

Since last year’s debut EP, ‘The Wheel Turning King’, put Nancy Elizabeth Cunliffe on the radar of discerning nu-folkies, she may have dropped her surname but definitely not the quality of her music.

Like a certain other famed female soloist, Nancy Elizabeth’s main musical weapon of choice is the harp, as displayed on the likes of opener I’m Like The Paper and The Remote Past. Her voice is a million miles away from the Marmite tones of Ms Newsom though, blessed as it is with clipped northern vowels aplenty, highlighting her Wigan upbringing. These roots show through strongest on Off With Your Axe, which strikes a miner chord with its tale of life down the pit.

It’s the rich variety of other instrumentation that keeps ‘Battle and Victory’ so fresh and interesting though, as she plays a bewildering selection including guitars, dulcimer, violin, khim and bouzouki among many others. The harmonium-led waltz of Coriander melts away to a beautiful brass fade out, whilst Hey Son is uncharacteristically loud, with pounding bass drums and taut atmospherics reined in under an angry acoustic thrash.

The gorgeous Beth-Orton-esque How Can I Stop? has simmering strings that threaten to boil over but somehow never do, and the closing title track repeats the trick with an electric guitar to similarly wonderful effect.

“I like my life just the way it is” she sings on I Used To Try. With an album as good as this under her belt, it’s no surprise that Cunliffe - sorry Nancy Elizabeth - should be satisfied. ‘Victory’ is most assuredly hers.

Links:
http://www.nancyelizabeth.co.uk