Because we live in a world where more is more, where music makers in particular seem so enamoured of the modern studio and its digital potential, we have lost an appreciation for the simple, succinct, and straightforward art of making music.
I suspect many today, especially younger music aficionados, would listen to the delicate and dexterous songs of Mirabelle Skipworth and feel cheated, as if music can be judged on a value-for-money basis: that if it isn’t full of sonic gizmos and studio gimmickry, it is somehow not fully living up to its side of the bargain.
I would argue that the opposite is true: if anyone can make such gorgeous music out of so few, well-chosen sonic threads, then they are the more skillful artist. Mirabelle Skipworth, for me, is skill personified, and When the Waters Part is the perfect balance of tradition and forward-thinking, for the slightly familiar and the wonderfully fresh.
Take the quirkily titled “Peter Pull Up Your Pants”, a song that blends the simple elegance and musical honesty of an almost busked delivery, but then arrayed with chiming, and indeed charming, additional layers of pedal steel guitar, while “The Feast” is a lilting and lovely slice of folky-country goodness.
For me, it is “Rarely See the Sun” that is the highlight, a blend of spaciousness and warmth, shimmering piano that, appropriately, feels like sun on water made into sound, a gentle beat, and a seductive sax.
What a fantastic album, one with the same blend of rootsy understatement and soulfulness, ambience and energy that served the likes of Norah Jones so well. Mirabelle Skipworth makes exactly the sort of music that reminds us that it is quality, not quantity, that makes music work, that having the right few elements – words, bars, riffs, phrases – in the right place is everything, that less, to turn to the oldest adage in the book, is more. Yes, it’s a cliche, but cliches are cliches for a reason, and that reason is that they are true!
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