Rachel Sermanni – Eggshells w/ Electric String Orchestra

Brilliant.

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.

Rachel Sermanni

My first encounter with Rachel Sermanni was purely accidental.  I saw her support Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit during one of his many solo shows and she caught my attention.  Since then everything seems to be falling nicely into place for Sermanni as she was a favourite at the 2010 Celtic Connections.  Since then, she appeared on one of my favourite TV shows of 2011: ‘Scotland Rocks at SXSW’ which showcased a wonderful mix of some of the plentiful Scottish acts’ that played at the SXSW festival in Austin Texas earlier this year.

I can really see myself sitting against a tree, in an empty field with dungarees on, chewing some straw, or relaxing by the fire in a country cottage listening to her beautiful voice accompanied by calming acoustic guitar, and if you have any of the above items then I suggest this is what you do.  However, I would more strongly recommend that you go to a live performance of Sermanni’s where you will truly notice her powerful vocals and the smoothness in which she switches from subtle serenading to sturdy strumming.

Luckily, she’s playing the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on the 17th August and tickets can be found here.  They are a little on the steep side at £16 (£14 concessions), but I feel like it would be worth it.

Rachel’s myspace has a number of songs on it, which you can listen to, as well as some great live videos.  However, it looks like all this moving up in the world is going to see her move to a more permanent home at rachelsermanni.net, where you can go and get the excellent ‘Burger Van Song’ for free, well you have to give up your e-mail, but it’s still free.  I’m fairly sure it’s called ‘Burger Van Song’, although I did see it down on this recent playlist on The Pop Cop as, ‘Bugger Van Song’.  Was going to make a joke there, but I’ll just leave it at that.

In the meantime, here’s the lovely Waltz from ‘The Bothy Sessions’, which if my memory serves me right is a little recording studio out in the countryside, but that may be called ‘The Barn’. Regardless..