Bring In the Light: Si Kahn’s Songs of Courage and Resistance Phoebe Rees (2024)

$15.00

Description

Label: Strictly Country Records
All songs written by Si Kahn

★★★★★

THE Oswestry native Phoebe Rees grew up listening to Schubert, Bob Dylan, traditional Bolivian dance music and studied classical viola in Edinburgh and London. She’s also a qualified music therapist.

This collection of songs is certainly therapy with an immediate restorative effect. The moving tribute to country singer Ola Belle Reed or the ode to civil rights activist from Wisconsin Belle La Follette illuminate and edify.

The deceptive simplicity of the arrangements masks exceptional musical refinement of which her warm and expressive voice is an integral component.

“They know your name, they hunt you down,” from In Afghanistan is a perturbing evocation of terror unleashed against women, while the violin-driven When The War Is Done asks poignantly: “What will happen to the rest of us when the war is done?”

Intensely political, lucid and invigorating. Majestic!

Michal Boncza – Morning Star (UK) April 5, 2024