Album review: Laura Cortese, Into The Dark (Laura Cortese)

San Francisco-born, Boston-based singer-songwriter-fiddler working the bowed string till the rosin melts – the same string that worked for Claudio Monteverdi, generations of Appalachian folk musicians and the Velvet Underground. Cortese is all too aware of the value of a drone. There are hardly any drums, but there are lots of percussively sawed strings to compensate – thick skeins of sound which knot and plait and twist with unrelenting intensity.

The songs are perhaps less vivid than their author would like them to be, and that may be a result of her weightless way of singing their shallow curves, not to mention a production which favours instrumental texture. But it’s an interesting sound and Jefferson Hamer’s on it. Do investigate.