IT WAS ON ALBUM DREAMS OF BREATHING UNDERWATER THAT ELIZA CARTHY FINALLY OUTGREW HER ROOTS AND OFFERED SOMETHING NOT ONLY ENTIRELY HER OWN, BUT ALSO SEEMINGLY NEW AND EXTREMELY COOL.
A self-contained steam-folk tour-de-force, the album’s twisted shanties, salt-on-copper ribaldries and gothic tattoo balladry was both piercing revelation and no surprise.
It’d been coming for a while – lines could be traced through older songs such as THE COMPANY OF MEN – but there was something supremely confident and very sexy indeed about Carthy’s brassy 2008 aesthetic.
The 31-tracks comprising new two-decade (and two CD) retrospective release WAYWARD DAUGHTER (which shares its title with Sophie Parke’s excellent biography – exclusive extract here) include some from DREAMS OF BREATHING UNDERWATER, some from equally grand 2011 follow-up NEPTUNE and some from further back in Carthy’s solo discography – but it has a much broader remit than to be a mere ‘best of’.
Idiosyncratic self-penned material (LITTLE BIG MAN, MR WALKER, TWO TEARS) and offbeat collaborations (GREY GALLITO with Salsa Celtica) co-exist happily alongside interpretations of traditional song (ROLLING SEA) and nods to her roots, best displayed in recordings with ‘folk royalty’ parents Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson (THE FORSAKEN MERMAID and A DARK LIGHT as Waterson:Carthy). She brings gravitas to the cosmic SPACE GIRL in the role of virtuoso sweetheart in The Imagined Village (a floating concept-band where modern and traditional, young and old, from all cultures mix freely in small-scale reflection of a UK ideal).
WAYWARD DAUGHTER is perfectly pitched and beautifully packaged, neatly celebrating Eliza Carthy’s range: whether as songwriter, interpreter or contributor-par-excellence.