ROSALIE CUNNINGHAM
From the ashes of Purson, a triumphant rebirth.
A PERSONAL AND POWERFUL ALBUM FROM
A VIVID PERFORMER.
After psychedelic rock troupe Purson went their separate ways at the end of 2016, vocalist and guitarist Rosalie Cunningham took an extended break from the music scene. Having made her name leading the acclaimed post-punkers Ipso Facto before forming Purson, at 29 she’s already an industry veteran. Now the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter is back with her own debut album and it’s as theatrical as you might expect.
Rosalie told her Facebook followers that the initial plan was to lock herself away and ‘record McCartney 1 style – playing all the instruments, producing, mixing etc.’ Then she put a call out for musical assistance from ‘kindred spirits of exceptional talent and excitement’, who turned up in the shape of Ross Wilson (bass, guitar, drums), Mark Stonell (keyboards) and Samuel Thompson (drums).
The resulting eight songs recorded under her own name retain much of Purson’s brand of vaudeville psychedelia and magick vibes but there’s a sense that life got serious after the carnival left town. Romantic disillusionment is a recurring lyrical theme and maybe even some scores to be settled. The record is by no means a downer, though – more the work of an independent spirit that’s had to leave an old life behind and is facing the future with a more realistic perspective and a refusal to repeat old mistakes.
Her enigmatic, imperious voice and stage persona have been compared to Curved Air’s Sonja Kristina and Siouxsie Sioux (the latter to Rosalie’s chagrin, for some reason). The sleeve artwork is inspired by late-60s, early-70s schlocky horror queens such as Anita Pallenberg’s Great Tyrant in Barbarella and Samantha Robinson in 2016 occult pastiche The Love Witch. Among the maelstrom of musical influences that flash by are the Sgt Pepper-style fairground Wurlitzer on Dethroning The Party Queen and gusts of Voodoo Child wahwah on Riddles And Games. Clever word play and wry humour is evident throughout, for example, House Of The Glass Red, with its reference to ‘Drifting up Jacob’s Creek without a paddle’. And there are large dollops of psychedelia from the outset with opener Ride On My Bike, the exquisite Butterflies and the Floydian Nobody Hears (one of the standouts).
Closing track A Yarn From The Wheel unfurls with a blaze of sinister-sounding fuzz guitar into a 13-minute folk horror epic, featuring a Mellotron reminiscent of Their Satanic Majesties’… 2,000 Light Years From Home.
It takes a few listens to all sink in but eventually reveals itself as a personal and powerful album from one of the current scene’s most vivid performers.