Rachel Sermanni – The Bothy Sessions E.P.

Guest blog and explanation for guest blog by Drew McCluskey:

This is the second time that a post has been written about Rachel Sermanni on this particular blog and the first time I’ve written for this blog, and there is a very good reason for that.  Gary is on holiday so I’m helping Stuart out plus I’m bored on the phones in work.  After getting paid last week I decided to indulge myself and buy a copy of Rachel’s ep ‘The Bothy Sessions’, you can get one for yourself here, it’s a limited release of 750 and every one has been signed by Rachel Sermanni herself.

The ep was recorded in a bothy (hence the name) somewhere in the Scottish highlands. It started with Rachel sending out an open invitation to all the musicians she knew to come and join her in recording an ep, expecting no one to come she was pleasantly surprised by the turn out. I read somewhere that most of the other instruments were improvised at the time of the recording, I take that with a pinch of salt as recording is usually done with a series of takes so I imagine by the time the final cut was being put down everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to be playing. The inside cover of the ep is covered in photos taken during the recording, which is pretty cool.

When it arrived on Wednesday I carefully tore it open to have a look and a listen. I found myself wondering about how painful Rachel’s hand/wrist must have got, and how tedious it must have been, signing her name 750 times, I reckon her name will have seemed unusual to write by the end of it. The first time I listened to the ep was in my living room while my flatmates noisily played FIFA and made dinner, I decided quickly that this was not the right atmosphere for listening to such delicate sounds.

My second listen was much more enjoyable, I went on a shopping run and decided that the 20 minute walk to and from the supermarket would be a good
atmosphere for Rachel Sermanni’s voice intertwined with the big band sounds of brass, drums and woodwind. This took me by surprise because having listened to the few songs on her Myspace pseudo-religiously for the last two weeks and seeing her live at avalanche records, I was under the false impression that this ep would be the same, namely just Rachel and a guitar. At first I was worried that the use of woodwind, piano, horns and drums would ruin the lovely-ness that is Rachel’s voice. Thankfully I was wrong, the voice is the same but with less pressure on it to hold the song on it’s own. The song can go out with an extended outro of clashes and humms and plinks. This is particularly noticeable when you compare the ep’s version of Waltz to that found on her Myspace, on the ep the song is almost a minute and a half longer, no new lyrics just a minute long instrumental outro.

It seems that the way I’m going is to run through the ep in order of the songs so I’ll continue that way. The second song Pablo’s City starts along a similar vein as Waltz with the gentle humm of Rachel’s voice but builds up to finale of horns and piano, which gives the song a very upbeat end. I’ll admit this is my least favourite song on the ep, I’m still not sure if that is because of the heavy use of big band sounds or if it’s because I’m fussy and don’t like the title of the song, I guess we’ll never know.

The third song is a short one that I heard once before at the avalanche records in-store, called Little Prayer, this song is much more like the older stuff found on her Myspace and very much to my taste, just Rachel’s voice and her guitar. Short and sweet and beautifully chilled out, I listened to this song last night before going to sleep and safe to say it worked a treat. There isn’t really a huge more I can say about this song. It’s lovely.

As for the last song In The Hollow, it’s a good midpoint between the big band sounds of Pablo’s City and sweet solo sounds of Little Prayer. It is gentle without being weak and dense without being overpowering. I think this song will grow to be my favourite song on the album in the next few days, overtaking Waltz which is currently my favourite as it is the one which I have heard the most and am the most familiar with.

Overall you should all go and buy Rachel’s ep just now; not just because I’ve told you to but because she is an immensely talented singer-songwriter and in the future when (god-willing) she is super famous you’ll have a signed copy of her first ever ep, which will be super-fucking-cool.