Friday 1 November 2013

Christine Leakey - My Heart Has Been Broken By One Unfit To Name

Single review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk


With our policy of not featuring covers or novelty records, the recent deluge of Halloween songs that's flooded our inbox will probably not be going any further (sorry everyone!), but this is a bit different. We heard earlier this year that Canadian songstress Christine Leakey had begun work on a new album, one that may be quite different from the excellent 'Tapping Trees In A Trinket Box Of Treasure', yet 'My Heart Has Been Broken By One Unfit To Name' sounds like it could have been from the same recording sessions, designed as a dark interlude. This is perhaps because, although only released this week, the song was recorded in 2009 for UK film 'Where Dogs Divide Her', when Christine was asked to put a poem for a specific scene to music. So the cleverly done video (it's gory and partly psychological rather than pantomime horror) comes from that source.

When David Lynch began releasing records recently, you may have expected them to sound more like this than the unexpected styles he produced. The music here is stark, intensely atmospheric and, importantly, quite cinematic without being over the top. In fact you could say the opposite is true; this track is actually very understated. It's slow, it's deceivingly complex, it's impeccably produced and the vocals are haunting, but they're positioned back a little in the mix, so as not to take the spotlight away from the song as a whole. The idea after all, was to create a soundscape to accompany a bleak poem that speaks of the devil, funeral fires, deadly fevers and fading to dust, so taking the focus somewhere else would be unfaithful to the whole notion. It takes a steady pair of hands to sail a musical ship like this, and many would get it wrong. So although we're still left waiting to hear if there will be a possibly different direction for Christine Leakey in the future, this stunning, reverberating piece will satisfy any cravings for now.



Christine Leakey's website

Buy the single





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