A few hours ago in the UK Dolly Parton was trending on twitter, so this post seems (even if we say so ourselves) very well timed. Take a musical blender, press the buttons marked The Strokes, country, blues and of course good old Dolly herself and the results will be the musical smoothie that is Liverpool chanteuse Delta Maid. She’s recently recorded a version of Julian & Co’s boogie tune Under Cover Of Darkness and as you listen you’ll see that she has very much put her stamp on it.
Delta Maid could be accused of plain imitation – her American reference points are so obvious, but in the UK where these days it seems that every young boy or girl that has discovered folk and roots music and can play acoustic guitar is jumping on the bandwagon driven by the likes of Marling and Mumford, it’s nice to see someone doing something a little bit different with it.
As we mentioned in our previous post (here) on Delta Maid, her album is due May 9.
Yee-ha cowboys (and cowgirls), Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn would be proud of Liverpool lass Delta Maid as she does a fine job of recreating those Nashville highs back in the UK. We’ve already featured Delta a couple of times and today we’re streaming her new single Of My Own together with another stripped down song Broken Branches which she recorded for the Shazam Sessions YouTube channel. (More Shazam goodness here)
“Stop laying all your heartache on me, quit pushing all your trouble on me,” croons Delta to someone who keeps bringing her down with their woes on Of My Own. With an up-tempo rootsy acoustic country sound that’s complimented with hammond organ vibes and piano, Of My Own could, in an alternative world, be a great motown / soul stomper, but instead Delta brings the blues to this highly FM friendly song.
Delta Maid’s album is now due for release on May 9 with Of My Own being available the week before.Although we suspect she’s likely to find more love for within the American market place than the UK, she’s playing the Camden Crawl and a number of UK dates throughout May. Check the Myspace for details.
How does the best music affect you? Is it just entertainment? Is it something to fill the air when there’s nothing else there? Or is it something that stirs an emotion and connects with you in some way? The Changes Made by Delta Maid is most certainly the later in our case. It’s a beautiful, humble sounding piece of work, fashioned from soft acoustic guitar and the sweetest of voices that owes great debt to American country and blues music. Listen for just a few seconds and you can hear tones of Jewel and Stevie Nicks, even though Delta Maid is from Liverpool, UK. This may not be the most fashionable sound, but as we’ve said before fashion is transient, the cool of today is tomorrows naff – better to play and listen to music that speaks to you, irrespective of genre, time or place. Delta Maid’s music is not the stuff of Hype Machine listings (although by virtue of this blog her music will be present there) or Pitchfork credibility, but it’s a special crop all of its own.
We first featured Delta Maid last July and since then she has been out on tour supporting Seth Lakeman. Now bizarrely she is about to support every mothers favourite Gary Barlow at Shepherds Bush Empire, London for his special fortieth birthday charity gig. The audience will be made up of invited guests, plus 1,200 Gary Barlow and Take That fans who entered a special lottery to buy tickets. We’re not quite sure how she’ll go down at that, for songs like The Changes Made need utter stillness and a perfectly silent audience to be fully appreciated. So before you click the play button and listen to this song make sure everything is quiet and that you won’t be disturbed. Then close your eyes, sit back and immerse yourself in her radiantly sublime sound - make a connection.
An album called Outside Looking In is due in March. Download the song from here.
Quite recently we received an email that suggested that Breaking More Waves was “The best synth pop / electronic music blog on the UK south coast.” Compliments are always very nice, even if the motive is to attempt to get coverage for a band on the blog. Yet this compliment disappointed us. Although electronic music is one of our passions, we have a much broader church than that. Look back at what we’ve covered this year, and you’ll see the evidence. We’ve never attempted to be genre specific, although the chances of you finding any metal or much hip hop here are limited. So for those who subscribe / read for fingerings of electronic goodness, we apologise, for today you are out of luck, it’s all about the river deep acoustic blues.
With the likes of Lissie and Caitlin Rose bringing a country sound back into mainstream fashion, it would come as no surprise to us if Delta Maid was the next rootsy songstress to step up to the plate. With a Mississippi croon that brings to mind Bonnie Raitt, Tammy Wynette or Patsy Cline it comes as some surprise to find that Delta Maid is from Liverpool, UK, studied biology and was training to be a vascular scientist before the call of music took over. Whilst Liverpool may not draw immediate analogies to the Deep South sound that Delta Maid references, she suggests that there is at least one similarity between the two - that of honesty - as Liverpool folk are well known for wearing their hearts on their sleeve.
The songs of Delta Maid consist of piano, acoustic guitar and soft drums. We can imagine wandering into a stuffy Jack Daniels stained bar in Alabama and finding her sitting in the corner, singing her heart out. From the piano balladry of Running On Empty to the nasal twangs and guitar picking of Breaking Branches, Delta Maid has songs that could charm the socks off both a Scouser and a cowboy.
Although primarily a singer songwriter in her own right, Delta Maid has worked with Ed Harcourt on a song called Make Up Your Mind, the video of which can be seen here (warning contains nudity). However everything else she has created has been under her own steam - a spirited and accomplished set of songs which should endear to those who get to see her play this summer at a significant number of UK Festivals including T in the Park, Latitude, Deershed Festival and the Big Chill.
If you go to see her, just don’t expect any synth pop.
