A wonderful elegy to Elson’s home and her love of music.
It’s been a long time since
Karen Elson released a record, seven years in fact since her Jack White produced debut, '
The Ghost Who Walks'. The break is understandable though as, well, she has a lot on. Constantly in demand as one of the world’s most recognisable models as well as the small matter of bringing up her two children, releasing music has taken a back burner for Elson.
The record that has finally emerged though, ‘
Double Roses’, is a sublime and beautifully considered work that represents how deeply and tenderly Elson thinks about music and her songs. It took a long time to get into the right emotional frame of mind to write these songs and find the right collaborators. The result is well worth the wait.
Produced with Jonathan Wilson in Los Angeles, the album is built around pastoral and beatific folk songs that wind and weave their way around intricate and bewitching melodies. See, for example, the fluttering glossolalia of the title track. Or the woodwind adorned melancholia of opening track ‘
Wonderblind’.
