In 2014, Paul Woodgate opened a live review with “Tuesday – an album launch at the 12 Bar Club. It might be a cliche, but this could be interesting. A woman known for her incisive prose in various big league music and culture magazines and a handful of well-received biographies now finds the coin has landed tails up, and we’re writing about her. Sylvie Simmons eponymous debut was released through Light In The Attic on November 12, and tonight on Denmark Street she offers up the opportunity to see her windswept lo-fi Americana up close.”
That album now sees a follow up with Blue on Blue, to be released on 14 August via Compass Records.
Compass writes: If her first album seemed to appear of nowhere, in a way it did. For three and a half decades, before coming out as a singer-songwriter, Sylvie — born in London and based in California — had been an acclaimed rock writer, and the author of books including her celebrated biographies of Serge Gainsbourg, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. It was after touring around the world for more than a year behind I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (her 2012 book which now has over 25 translations), singing his songs and accompanying herself on a ukulele, that Sylvie did the near-impossible and crossed over into writing and recording her own songs, with the encouragement and accompaniment of Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, who produced her first album.
In 2017, Sylvie returned to Tucson to make her second album with Gelb. But the work came to an abrupt halt. That first evening, after recording first takes of five of the songs, Sylvie suffered a dreadful accident that left her with multiple broken bones, nerve damage and an unusable left hand. Life became “A bit of a horror story,” a long and painful period of surgeries and rehabilitation. Finding herself unable to play several of the songs she’d written for the album with her damaged hand, Sylvie wrote some new songs. She recorded them in different studios in-between treatments and her writing work.
But listening to BLUE ON BLUE, you’d never know there had been a problem. Seamless and beautiful, with its memorable songs and spacious, unexpected arrangements, once again it highlights her intimate vocals and intelligent lyrics that at first listen seem dreamy and gentle but hold hidden barbs and pain. From the opening song, “Keep Dancing,” where she sings “The man said you were dancing with no shoes on amid the broken glass and dog sh- and cigarette ends,” you know you’re in for no ordinary ride.
The band on BLUE ON BLUE consists of Gelb, Thoger Lund, Gabriel Sullivan and Brian Lopez from Tucson, plus Australian Matt Wilkinson and Jim White (Wrong-eyed Jesus) from Athens, Georgia. Sylvie plays ukulele – an instrument she first started playing in 2005.
“I’d always thought of the uke as a toy”, she says, “a little handful of happiness. But not any more. From the moment I picked it up, I fell in love. A ukulele has a sad, fractured sweetness, like a broken harp. And a modesty. It doesn’t try to impress you, it almost apologizes for being there.” Abandoning her piano and guitar, her songs “came through this tiny instrument with all their heartbreak and truth intact.”
They are weighed down with real life stories for real gone kids, for a tumbleweed existence outside societies prescribed structures. Songs for loners, lovers and losers – what would we do without them?
Paul Woodgate, Folk Radio
Pre-Order Blue on Blue: https://compassrecords.lnk.to/blueonblueEM
Photo Credit: Tara Juell