Kim Lowings And The Greenwoods
Album: This Life
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.kimlowings.com

I owe a debt of gratitude to David Hughes at Three Chords And The Truth, for putting me in touch with Kim Lowings having seen her support Jess Morgan at a gig and thinking she was an artist that would be right up my street and how right he was.

"This Life" starts off with the traditional, "Devil And The Ploughman", a song about a Satanic stealing of a Sussex ploughman's wife only for the Devil to have to bring her back, because of the suffering she brought with her. (Something I hope doesn't happen to a recently departed grocer's daughter) The song was performed with a real passion and spirit and when an album opens like that it all bodes well.

Kim Lowings performs folk and folk rocks songs with a contemporary lilt. All of the classic folk elements are there, infidelity, love and death as well as the more mundane aspects of life, people, places, jobs and how the latter elements may interact to lead to the former ones. "The Flounder" is a great example of that, a tale about a fisherman whose life became corrupted by his wife's greed and the intervention of a magic fish. Ok so magical fish may not be that mundane, but there is a definite moral in the tale.

In The Greenwoods Lowings has chosen her band with the same care as her material, but then the Black Country has often proved to be fecund territory for folk musicians. They provide an excellent framework for the arrangements, with some great instrumental breaks featuring not only stringed instruments, but some great whistle work to boot.

"This Life" mixes all the elements of pace, arrangements and performance well, to the point where it demands not only attention, but also positive comparison, something particularly true for the more often covered songs like "The Begging Song", which immediately slots it's self near the top of the many versions I've heard.

The album signs off with a newer tradition, the hidden track. It starts off with "By The Shore" a very delicate piano ballad, one that really brings Kim Lowings voice into close focus, if it wasn't already. It's superbly emotionally charged. It's followed by a song of proffered prostitution and robbery and I don't think it's ever sounded so sweet.

Lowing's has proven to be a great discovery, for which, once again, my gratitude goes to David. "This Life" an album definitely worth seeking out.

Neil King