Music Arcades: Laura Gibson: Six White Horses - Blues and Traditionals Vol 1

I have a strong suspicion I was overcharged for this. The woman on the merch stall at the Electro Acoustic Club, downstairs at the Slaughtered Lamb, asked me for £10, the same price as the full albums. But this is only an 18-minute EP, so… Well, I didn't feel like quibbling — I'd just had a friendly chat with the woman sitting next to me, who had licensed Laura's recordings for the UK, or was her agent over here, or something — and I guess the extra money, if it was extra, made its way to Laura rather than being pocketed by the merch person.

I first came across Laura via Last.fm, probably on a path of associations that included Alela Diane and Mariee Sioux. She was playing in San Francisco the night Guy, Paul, Scott, Nic and I were there two years ago, but Guy and I already had tickets to see The Pogues. Fortunately she was on the bill of a couple of other London gigs in the following year that I would have gone along to even she hadn't been, including the one at the Slaughtered Lamb.

The sleeve notes explain how the songs were recorded in the kitchen, porch and basement of an old Victorian house near Portland. "Laura Gibson played a nylon stringed guitar, and sang through the speaker of an old record player." I'm not sure if that refers to one of those old His Master's Voice trumpet-style speakers, used for amplification, or if it means the speaker was used 'in reverse' as a microphone (which is also physically possible, since both microphones and speakers convert between electrical pulses and sound waves). If the latter, then it shows how unnecessary all those very sophisticated and expensive microphones are, because the sound — at its best, as on Black is the Color… — has an incredibly intimate feel, a bit like Witches by the Cowboy Junkies (see here for some proper writing about that).

At the end of the sleeve notes, it says, "These recordings are dedicated to all those who play songs for no other reason than there is music in their bones." So think of my tenner as a kind of acte gratuit, albeit one that I didn't volunteer.