41 f
ments that I felt were relevant, to just go for walks and let things run around in my head,” she says. Right Wantonly A-Mumming was also different from her earlier albums in that it did not deal – for the most part - with disturbing emotions and experiences. “Ini- tially I had a real block for writing those songs because they are hearty, and they are celebratory,” Kraus says. “Some of the win- tery ones have got specks of darkness, and then there is All Hal- lows, but mostly they’re straightforwardly happy songs.”
The multiplicity of voice is notable too on her latest album, K
The Woody Nightshade, released last year. “One of the things that inspired me in the way I wrote some of the harmony parts was Bul- garian singing,” she says. “I wanted to create something that had the same jarring feel to it, with strange intervals between the parts.” The Woody Nightshade features Nancy Wallace, Susanna Starling and Clare Button, three singers with whom Kraus had sung informally but never on record. “I wasn’t sure how easy it would be, because some of the harmony parts are quite discor- dant. The parts work in a way that’s less natural, not straightfor- wardly ‘nice’ sounding. But Nancy, Su and Clare were great. They mastered what they had to master.”
raus first discussed the then-unrecorded Woody Nightshade with me back in that Oxford cemetery; she was excited about the lyrical themes she was exploring. She now reflects on it as a finished prod- uct. “The first song I remember writing for that
album was Traveller Between The Worlds which I wrote when I was visiting Philadelphia. That song came out of conversations I was having with a friend. She dropped a bombshell that she and her husband might split up. I had thought of them as being a really great couple, they had been through a lot of difficult times together, and it got me thinking about how difficult it is to make relationships work long-term.”
“There are some people who seem to be in love with each other after years and years, but that’s pretty rare. The relation- ships that seem to work do so because, as well as that initial intense ‘in love’ feeling, there is this deeper recognition and com- munion between you and the other person. In The Woody Night- shade, the title track, the narrator of that song is betrayed, and then finds a way to stick around. On the surface, there seems to be something a bit wimpy about that. But then, if you’re with some- one for more than a short period of time, they’re going to do something that upsets you. [These ideas] don’t really get written about that much, because people focus on the initial exciting ‘being in love’ stuff.”
Sharron Kraus considers her music’s relationship to the term ‘folk’ very carefully. “I’d describe my music as folk- influenced, or dark folk, or psych folk,” she says. “Because some of the music that I make is folk music, but mostly my own songs are not. I’m not writing songs that come from the voice of Everyman.”
“My songs express an idiosyncratic take on the world,” Kraus concludes. “And I think that take is worth expressing.”
www.sharronkraus.com F
Photo: Bruce Cardwell
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