CD Review: Karling Abbeygate - Karling Abbeygate

Music isn't like fashion. In fashion, a few tastemakers decide "bell bottoms are back," and voila, bell bottoms are back. Tastes and styles in music change too, but the dynamics are far more complex - chaotic, one might say, like the weather. No one expected O Brother Where Art Thou to spur a popular revival of American folk music, for example. The producers accidentally tapped into the American public's dormant need for authenticity - and sold millions of CDs. A few years earlier, Gregorian Chant was all the rage. No one had plotted and schemed to sell a naveful of Chant CDs - it just happened.

Rootsy, authentic-style country music is currently enjoying a revival. National television broadcasts the Americana Music Awards; the new Roots Music Association just signed up its 1,000th member without having done anything yet; and front-porch country music scenes are thriving in places as unlikely as Brooklyn (yes, as in "No sleep till"). And while there are savvy promoters behind some of the milieu's big-name artists, they're not creating a market so much as capitalizing on one that had been underserved.

Enter British-born songstress Karling Abbeygate and California indie label Dionysus Records. Raised, so the story goes, on a diet of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn by a British mother and a Kansan father in Norwich, England, the singer has returned to those roots, changing from an ersatz alt-rock Gwen Stefani into a one-woman 1950s and 60s country music revival. With a vocal style inspired by Cline, a timbre like a higher-voiced Wanda Jackson, and a persona (on record at least) 50% Loretta Lynn, 40% Betty Boop and 10% Emily the Strange, Abbeygate may have just enough sly punkitude to popularize this anachronistic sound, which extends to the clean but deliciously old-fashioned arrangements.

However, since trends in music can't be engineered with scientific precision, it's rather to be expected that, whether she ends up a star, a mere blip, or something in between, Abbeygate will remain a unique artist. She certainly has the talent and charm to become a big success.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Blogcritics' Culture and Theater Editor. In addition to reviewing NYC theater, he writes a semi-regular round-up of independent music releases. By day he is a computer professional and a freelance writer and editor, and at night he's a …

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