16 December 2010
The GuardianJohn Fordham
Last year's All tThe Ghosts album was a coming-of-age for Gwyneth Herbert, the autobiographical Hackney singer-songwriter who had sidestepped being marketed as a saleable jazz chanteuse to explore her own poetry, folk-song, variations on Hackney pirate-radio beats, and dark Tom Waitsian whimsy, among many things. This mini-album (occasioned by Herbert's forthcoming single, Perfect Fit) invites producer and engineer Robert Harder, pre-Ziggy Bowie fan Mr Solo, west country electronicists Girl After Shower, and Polar Bear's Seb Rochford to remix several All the Ghosts songs - which make it a fascinating set of variations on the familiar for Herbert regulars, or an appealing introduction for jazz-averse newcomers. Rochford's transformation of Herbert's bluesy roadsong My Mini and Me draws the singer's voice into a whirlpool of electronic hummings and thundering tom-tom patterns, Girl After Shower strips down the lyrical My Narrow Man to its title phrase amid squeezed electronic sounds and backwards-tape noises, Mr Solo's version of Perfect Fit turns it into a Bowie song. For all these radical transformations, though, Herbert's unfussy soulfulness and personal vision always glow through.