Labels: Spidersongs
Review by: Oli Saunders
Spider is a folk project by Jane Herships, residing in New York. She is listed as the only band member but on the record there are a variety of instruments. Pictures seem to indicate that she sometimes performs by herself, simply playing an acoustic guitar, and sometimes with additional people playing the other instruments. As I may have mentioned in previous folk reviews, I am a massive fan of completely stripped down melancholic folk music and I find that adding much more than an acoustic guitar often ruins the music for me. Weird but true. So this record has good and bad points from my perspective. I see some nice songwriting going on in places and Jane has a good voice. Those two things are enough to make me interested in any folk artist. But I find the additional layering on record of keyboards, drums and lead guitar off putting. The rhythm guitar is an electric guitar too, rather than acoustic.
Having said that, the first track ‘White Snake’ is pretty decent. And maybe the very basic riff played by the rhythm guitar needs additional instruments to add to the song. It meanders along in sad fashion, though I can’t quite work out what it is about. From then on the record continues with a similar structure but rarely reaching the same heights. It is too slow in places and whilst the songwriting is generally decent it’s not good enough to get away with this and it all gets a bit bland. I don’t mean this to be too negative, however. It is still fairly enjoyable and there are other highlight moments on the record.
Overall, I should stop writing folk reviews with my one dimensional viewpoint. It is difficult to remove my strong subjective taste from a review. I guess it’s just that a few people have absolutely nailed folk music in decades gone, and most of what I hear these days doesn’t cut it when compared to this. Why would you listen to this kind of thing on record when you can put on Joan Baez at Woodstock or Jackson C. Frank, who affects me deeply whenever I listen to him. Seeing folk live is a bit different as there’s additonal spark to make it interesting. I imagine I would enjoy watching Jane play in solo form. But as for the record I can’t imagine I am going to listen to it very often.
28th November 2009