Katherine the great deserves a Grammy
Katherine Priddy
The Pendulum Swing
Out Friday
★★★★★
ABC
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Touring until February 22
★★★★★
The big winners at last week’s Grammy Awards were women, which is just as it should be. While live music remains predominantly male, at least half of the most interesting new albums are now made by women. To achieve equality, all we need is for this trend to last another 60 years.
When the 2025 Grammys come around, I’m hoping to hear the name of Katherine Priddy. She’s the Birmingham folk singer who released a sparkling debut album, The Eternal Rocks Beneath, in 2021. Guy Garvey, the Elbow singer and BBC DJ, called her ‘utterly brilliant’. Like many artists, Priddy found the follow-up a struggle. ‘It turns out,’ she says, ‘the second album really is difficult.’ But you’d never know it from the songs, which have a lovely ease about them.
Folk is the oldest form that today’s pop singers attempt, the most beaten track in the whole field. The challenge is not to get stuck in the ruts left by centuries of predecessors.
Priddy passes the test by marrying a traditional sound (gentle guitars, glints of brass) to piercingly modern lyrics. She can whip up something original from the simplest ingredients. ‘We don’t fall in love,’ she sings, ‘we rise.’
Besides love, her themes are home and family. By The Pendulum Swing, she means the pull and push of the nest, captured in a pair of instrumental bookends called Returning and Leaving. In between are ten tracks with words – half of them good, the other half even better.
The family numbers glow with warmth. Father Of Two is a loving thank-you to Priddy’s dad, with a contemporary twist (she is a donor child). Walnut Shell is a fond farewell to her twin as he moves to New Zealand. First House On The Left is a deft portrait of a home and its history.
The love songs are just as likeable and more dramatic. On These Words Of Mine, Northern Sunrise, Anyway, Always and
Does She Hold You Like I Did, Priddy’s pen turns into a comb, going through great tangles of romance and regret. Her tour in May should be a treat.
Meanwhile, another gifted wordsmith is back on the road. Martin Fry of ABC sang and co-wrote the classic debut album The Lexicon Of Love (1982), still adored for its glossy intelligence. Periodically he performs it in full, alongside ABC’s other hits, with an orchestra conducted by the great Anne Dudley.
The first word Fry utters is ‘debonair’, from When Smokey Sings, and at 65 he lives up to it. Wearing a purple suit, then a pale pink one, he still has his lanky presence and laconic wit.
The highlight of a heart-warming evening is The Look Of Love, so good he plays it twice. If you miss him, he will be back touring again in the autumn to promote his forthcoming autobiography, A Lexicon Of Life.