5. Kate & Anna McGarrigleKate And Anna McGarrigle
This is probably the one on here that you’d least expect me to have. A guy who worked for a Canadian record company called Bob Ansell who loved our music, came backstage one day and said: “I’m giving you a present.” He gave me a copy of their first album and said: “You’ll like this.” And I was like, “what, I’m going to like Canadian folk music?” But he went: “It’s melancholy.” I understood and said, “I’ll love it then won’t I?” You see, I love Leonard Cohen and obviously Canadian melancholy touches me deeply. There are some songs here that quite frankly just bleed onto the record. Obviously ‘Go Leave’ was written by Kate when Loudon Wainwright left her, and it just breaks your heart, just pouring out all the pain. There are tracks on here such as ‘Heart Like A Wheel’ and ‘My Town’ and I’d suggest that anyone who likes a bit of melancholy gets this album. It also has a couple of banging tunes on it such as ‘Complainte pour Ste-Catherine’ which is sung in French and has a squeezebox [does squeezebox impression] which is very poppy.
