reviews > TIFFANY ECKHARDT - 'Horse' (Independent / Black Market Music)
Written by Sam Fell
I'm a sucker for female vocalists. Well you're a big sucker, you're saying, because female vocalists, as well as male ones, are a dime a dozen and what's so special eh? I agree with that, singer songwriters are every where, and for the most part, they're OK but largely staid and they all sound the same, but every now and again, you get someone who has a voice that makes you stop and listen. Really listen.
From my point of view, to really get noticed in this day and age as a vocalist, you've got to have something special, perhaps something unusual in your style, all whilst being able to actually sing and put music together, for example, Kasey Chambers and Mia Dyson.
To this list, I can safely add Tiffany Eckhardt, who over the past few years has been crooning in her Valium-esque, almost childlike folky voice, culminating in Horse , her fifth album, and one which tears at the heartstrings, taking you on little emotional journeys and losing you in it's swirling, mandolin driven melodies.
The title track, 'Slowdown', 'Fairy Child' and 'Throw A Coin', which make up the first four tracks on the album, are each in themselves, between three and five minutes of a parallel universe; anyone who can invoke so much melancholy and yet still convey such tearful happiness, is doing something right. Eckhardt's voice is like Jesus, the mandolin, acoustic guitar and double bass, the disciples; leaping and cavorting in her wake, all tied neatly together with brown, furry string.
Dave Steel, who isn't left handed as the reversed-neg pic on the inside cover would suggest, takes care of the haunting guitar and soaring mandolin, his quiet backing vocal merely a handrail for Eckhardt's low, gravely wisp and her high, piquing, silver lined wail when she lets go.
My only criticism of Horse is that towards the end, some of the songs lose a little impact in comparison to the first half of the album. Not to say any thing is bad, but tracks like 'Slowdown' and 'Throw A Coin' are masterful, whereas 'Summer Grass' lost me a little. Having said that however, you then get to ‘Volvo Driver' in it's tongue-in-cheek confessional vein and to finish, 'Sea Around The Shore', which is the ballad style piece that sets you down and tucks you in to dream of everything you've just experienced through listening to what has come before.
Horse is Australian folk music at it's best. I'd never heard Eckhardt before, so this is like an awakening, an ideal introduction to someone who I'm having trouble believing isn't a bigger name within, at least, the Australian scene. In this case however, it's Eckhardt's seeming lack of interest in anything but this music and the way she portrays both her self and these songs, that makes this a real folk album.
There is not an ounce of pretension prevalent on Horse, just twelve songs, an extraordinarily free and amazingly gorgeous voice, some fine playing, the humility emanates, or maybe it doesn't, and who cares, this is magic.
