These Frightening Machines＜限定盤/Colored Vinyl＞

These Frightening Machines is the third album from U.K. singer, songwriter, and guitarist Katherine Priddy. Her first two sets, 2021s The Eternal Rocks Beneath and 2024s Pendulum Swing, were deservedly acclaimed for original song structures, poignant lyrics and sparse production that recalled the era of Pentangle, Fairport Convention, and Nick Drake. Both records charted. By turns, These Frightening Machines steps in another, no less profound direction, aesthetically, sonically, and energetically. These ten songs are rife with themes of the female bodys fragility, anger, and despair, hope, longing, lust, love, and solidarity. She is joined by Landscapes Richard Walters and singer/songwriter Torres on select vocals, and multi-instrumentalist Ben Christophers on most of the tracks. An example of Priddys contemporary production aesthetic is present in opener and first single "Matches," with glitchy radio waves before her bluesy guitar, it offers a fingerpicked two-chord vamp flavored with cello and organic percussion. They frame her lyric before horns and synth flood the backdrop. The song stretches back in history to the time of burning witches: "They werent burning witches, it was women on those fires…." It ultimately details how women have been idolized, vilified, accused, controlled, or punished depending on what society needed them to represent. The chimes on the title cut are met by a strummed acoustic guitar. Its lyric was inspired by a medical procedure that required hospitalization, "Im having to learn/That these frightening machines/arent as tough as they seem…Now Im calling/Out for a sign that this bodys still mine after all … I have to confess its a bit of a mess…I have clung to whats left and discarded the rest." "Sirius" has a distinct sonic portrait that recalls the production on Drakes "Hazy Jane II," swelling with drums, strings, horn sounds, and layered guitars. "Hurricane" is framed in hand percussion, breezy acoustic guitars, and bass; its a cautionary tale about a relationship with a predatory man. "Madeleine" is a folksy love song that expresses love and solidarity for women in the music industry; its buoyed by melancholy strings and glorious vocal harmonies as Priddy duets with Torres. Her fingerpicked guitar is the primary vehicle on "Atlas." Simple orchestrations and effects frame her doubled vocal. Priddy turned 30 while writing this album: "Matter of Time" is gentle yet emotionally resonant in offering a view of life growing older but not wiser. Its adorned by Patrick Pearsons saxophone and Marley Ellis flute adding textural dimension. "Table Four" is one of the finest road songs to come down the pipe in an age. Though the protagonist longs for home, her quandary is that "... All too soon the scales start slipping, I never could resist an open door." Walters lends his voice to the poignant waltz "Im Always Willing." Amid mandolin, whispering drums, piano, bass, and guitars, the lovers allow romance, hardship, and distance their places in a relationship. Based on the high achievement of These Frightening Machines, we know that Priddy is no longer seeking her artistic voice; she has inhabited and become it. ~ Thom Jurek