Sometimes an album is worth checking out simply because of its producer. Gerry Diver has produced and performed on some of the most intriguing folk albums of the past year, including recordings by Lisa Knapp and O'Hooley & Tidow, and now provides unexpected, gently startling settings for this new set dominated by another distinctive female voice.
Mishaped Pearls are a London-based band formed by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ged Flood and German-born mezzo soprano Manuela Schuette, who provides a cool, detached, at times almost operatic treatment for a collection of new songs and reworked traditional material, mostly concerned with water, death or a mixture of the two. The mood is atmospheric, edgy English pastoral, with the drifting Old Father Thames matched against the gently bleak lament Six Dukes, and Schuette's cool vocals backed by fine harmony singing, strings, piano, banjo and slide guitar.
