At The Mermaid Parade

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Cat No: HJRCD46

Release Date: 29 March 2010

Label: Honest Jon's Records

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 4047179439220

Genres: Pop

Description
Her fourth album proper and her first for Honest Jon's, At The Mermaid Parade is a pop record with folk roots. Keineg's vast voice makes new songs sound familiar and old ones (a cover of Big Star's Thirteen) feel new, unexpected. It's both expansive and personal, a big record recorded in small spaces. It's also elegantly eccentric, fearless and funny.

Born in Brittany to sixties radicals: father a famous Breton poet, mother a Welsh nationalist. Raised in Brittany and then the valleys of South Wales, but a wanderer always by nature. Started busking as a teenager, following the drovers trail across Wales and Ireland, with the occasional foray over the border to London or Glastonbury. Stayed still for a while and made a reputation: singer, songwriter, force of nature. Didn't stay still much longer.

Gypsy spirit took her west to Ireland, then west again, cross the Atlantic to New York. Started playing in a little Irish bar called Sin E. Made friends and found believers there. Jeff Buckley. Made the scene. Iggy Pop tipped off Elektra to her: big deal, gonna make you a star. Never works like that for free spirits. Made two albums, O Seasons O Castles, and Jet: great songs, big productions.

Went back to Ireland, back to New York, back to Brittany, travelled, Portugal, Norway, Argentina, played music, not a star, a gypsy spirit. Another album, High July. Natalie Merchant covers her song, The Gulf Of Araby. The New York Times writes a profile of the great lost talent, tracks her down to Dublin. Not lost at all, just following her muse.

Back in New York, hanging out at Coney Island, on the Atlantic shore. Started on a new record, watching the Mermaid Parade go by. More songs came: songs of Ireland and Spain and Wales; songs of love and loss; of faithless men and searching women, sex and freedom; songs of a wanderer looking maybe to settle down for a while. Old tube mics and Moogs in a rented flat.

And now she's back in Wales after twenty years away. Still singing her amazing songs of failed revolutions and disastrous love, in that voice mixing Welsh and Breton and Irish into a sound that is wholly her own, startlingly powerful yet always intimate. With a new record to tell her friends just where she's been, and to let the rest of us know just what we've been missing.
Tracklisting