Big Red Sky Records

With her previous band Hieronymus, singer Katherine Hieronymus produced a wistful, contemplative folk-pop that found a middle ground between The Carpenters’ syrupy balladry and All About Eve’s cloud-gazing dreaminess. My Friend Rachel is her collaboration with Martin Newton – also musical back-up to singer Grant Baldwin as well as guitarist with Witches – and two years in fermentation, ‘A Moment’s Silence’ the first chance we’ve had to hear the band, since they haven’t yet gigged together. That fact isn’t surprising once you hear the elaborate orchestration on the album: it’d take some ensemble and something beyond the local venue circuit to do justice to their delicate arrangements and Katherine’s ethereal vocal reveries.
The album glides in with ‘Give Me Love’, a neat collage of acoustic guitar and strings, lush without sounding overcooked, radiating bucolic sweetness, tinged with the merest hint of melancholy. And so the mood is firmly set for the next 40 minutes. Cello and harp lend an oddly arcane feel to songs like ‘Me On The Inside’, while softly blossoming electronics give a more contemporary sheen to ‘Mermaid Smile’.
Throughout, Katherine’s voice remains placidly, perfectly detached. At its best – such as the intimate ‘A Good Day’, it’s gently enveloping. But sometimes it can feel suffocating – pretty but passionless. The album’s polished nature can make it sound like it lacks soul, and while many of the songs reward repeated listening, some shift in mood feels overdue after half a dozen songs. On cue, ‘Soured His Mood’ is a jaunty accordion-led swing, a sugary cousin to Kendra Smith’s kooky ‘Maggots’, and while My Friend Rachel quickly revert to type, they do leave the best to almost last with ‘Weak’, the innate sweetness working as it’s underpinned by underplayed regret and a gorgeously understated melody.