Frazey Ford - U Kin B the Sun

The Guardian 0

(Arts & Crafts)
The former Be Good Tanyas member develops her intimate version of southern soul – but fills it with strife from relationship breakdowns to gun issues

The lead single from Frazey Ford’s 2015 album Indian Ocean, a coruscating breakup lament called Done, came accompanied by one of the great videos of the last decade. It featured Ford leading a gaggle of glammed-up, righteously pissed-off looking mums through Vancouver, with some of their kids in tow. They march down suburban pavements, dance with abandon and cruise the streets in a battered mobile home. At one point, Ford visits a record store and holds an Otis Redding album up to the camera, which figures.

When Ford’s former bandmate in the Canadian group the Be Good Tanyas, Jolie Holland, struck out on a solo career, she concentrated on paring the band’s rootsy Americana down until it was stark and eerie (her version of their best-known song, The Littlest Birds, dramatically shifted its mood from amiable to chilling). But Ford has developed a sound rooted in warm southern soul. On Indian Ocean, she even employed the old house musicians from Memphis’ Hi Records – men who 40 years previously had played on Al Green’s classic 70s albums and Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain.