Kate Rogers - St Eustacia

Canadian songstress Kate Rogers is probably best known for her collaborations with artists Aim and Rae&Christian. Her work on Aim's truly monumental "Sail" got her some attention, and proved beyond a doubt that her voice is among the leaders in the biz. Haunting, delicate, beautiful, and on that track slightly unintelligible. Now she releases St. Eustacia, her first solo release, on Grand Central Records (the British home label of her aforementioned collaborators).

This isn't quite what one might expect, and then again it is. Aim and their fellows seem to have very little to do with the sound of the album, so those expecting more of the same risk being disappointed. There's more disparity in sound between these two sides of Kate, than say that between Dido's solo work and her collaborations with Faithless, which were in themselves already pretty different.

The Kate Rogers we get here still has the same beautiful voice, but the style is quite different. Instead of turntables and dreamy keyboard samples, we get real honest-to-god instruments. There's still some hints of that (oh-so 90s, but oh-so sweet) trip-hop sound we got used to on her previous singing ventures, but they're buried pretty well. This is somewhere between folk, indie country and singer songwriter territory. It's not rough though. The production is very slick, with reverbing and lots of 'big' sounds. It's not very poppy though, as it isn't like much else you would hear on the airwaves these days. It's probably Kate doing what she's always wanted to do.

And getting all the description out of the way and into the subjective part, it's damn good. Accessible, but not stupid. One of the things that impressed me most was the quality of the lyrics which are literate and clever but down-to-earth enough not to sound anywhere near pretentious. It's also a nice relief that there's a great range of songs on the album, unlike many artists who get stuck in a stylistic rut; Kate Rogers runs the gamut.

Article Author: Damon Muma

Damon Muma is a Canadian music junkie, writing enthusiast and vice versa

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