I saw Louise at the gig she did last night as one fourth of the Women of Folk project that gathers together the considerable talents of Linda Moylan, Lizzie Hardigham, Rebecca Mileham and Louise’s own.
Each brought to the table their own voice and personality, giving new life to songs by old time favourites. I post here a sample of Louise channelling the energy of Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon last night at the Blue Note evening at Gray’s Inn Road’s The Water Rats. She also did a beautiful version of Joan Baez’ Diamonds and Rust. As I said to Louise at the end of the concert, her version of it is even better than the original.
If, as someone once said, plagiarism is only allowed when followed by murder, Louise had blood on her hands last night, for she so inhabited the words of Joan Baez as to make them her own. All four of them did. But let us not indulge in violent imagery to talk about what is a work of love.
Louise is not only a good singer covering other people’s work. She is also a great composer of her own songs, though often in partnership with others. Her latest album, Love is the Bridge has been playing non-stop on the CD player in my London home.
It is a set of uplifting songs in the West Coast folk-rock tradition. They could have come out of Lauren Canyon in the early seventies, when women took the driving seat and drove us on their own roads to take us places where we had not been before, along that old Kerouac’s lifestyle of the nineteen fifties, but seen through a woman’s eyes.
Feminism owes a lot to those songwriters who were not happy with the puppet roles they had been given on the comedy of life.
Louise’s songs come from that same source but we are now quite a few years on that mystery tour and we all have many notches in our bedposts and we have fallen and lifted ourselves up a few times. We have been through many forests and crossed many deserts to arrive at the same place where we left, with a new knowledge of who we are or, if nothing more, of what we like and don’t like.
Love is the Bridge is not an exercise in nostalgia for the sounds of the past, but the soundtrack of the life of a modern woman in our modern world. Each track traces her highs and lows but, above all, her will to get on her feet and go on with her life, because she is too clever and been round the block too many times to believe in blue princes, but she has not yet given up on love, the only bridge to heaven that she and us will ever know.
Yes, it may lead to hell too, but it is worth trying every time. Louise’s album is about a strong woman who still dreams and hopes and it feels real and rough, like the old rock and roll songs they used to play on radio stations coming out among all the mendacious dross.
Go hear it on your streaming platforms, or, better still, catch her in one of her gigs. She is a fierce lady when you see her perform live. She’s the ultimate rock chick, full of love but definitely in the driver’s seat.
Rafael Peñas Cruz
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