Album Review

Nancy Elizabeth – Wrought Iron

• 23rd Oct 2009

Folk music will always be around in some fashion, as will an audience for it and it’s with a stark, moody approach to the genre that Wigan-bred starlet Nancy Elizabeth embarks on her second LP. Wrought Iron is a real atmosphere record; its music that’s best accompanied with a decent drop of red and a dimmer switch.

Brooding, lyrically dark piano/acoustic music is Elizabeth’s bread and butter, and she does it brilliantly on tracks like ‘tow the line’ and ‘the act’ to name a couple of standouts; she couples a voice that both rousingly beautiful and disarmingly brittle with intimately personal lyrics. There’s scope beyond the remit of the folk record too, for example in the more experimental ‘feet of courage’, which tries a bare, ambient percussion-and-voice mix and sounds great for it.

This is an assured, consistently well-written record from Elizabeth that’s set to galvanise and add to the songwriter’s burgeoning fanbase.