Kitty Daisy & Lewis - Kitty Daisy & Lewis Album Review

Album review of Kitty Daisy & Lewis debut self-titled album released through Sunday Best Recordings.

From the bizarre to the absurd and back again, this record is almost like the epitome of the noughties fascination with rehashing and recycling the past except it isn't strictly manufactured in the most nauseous, karaoke sense. Instead, we have three teenage siblings - Kitty, Daisy and Lewis Durham playing a clutch of songs that were essentially (albeit two) written and recorded between fifty and seventy years ago on authentic rather than synthetic instruments using vintage recording equipment without any modernised computer-aided techniques whatsoever.

What makes the whole concept even more absurd is that none of the three Durhams are over twenty years of age; indeed the youngest of the three, Kitty, is just embarking on her final year at school, which begs the question, what the hell are they doing playing standards their grandparents grew up with rather than creating something new? It sure as hell beats me, as does the fact that they somehow manage to pull it off - musically at least, in the same way Jools Holland makes his boogie woogie duets with unsuspecting guests every Friday sound like genuine articles, if at times a trifle nauseating.

What we have here then are ten songs, eight of which you may be familiar with, even its only by association of reading books describing the life and times of people like John Lee Hooker, John Coltrane and more recently (well, into the 1960s at any rate..) The Rolling Stones. 'Going Up The Country', perhaps best known for Canned Heat's reworking four decades ago and the timeless classic 'I Got My Mojo Working' actually sound entertainingly unique, while Lewis Durham's solo composition 'Buggin' Blues' and the rampant 'Mohair Sam', a one time hit for Sun Records legend Charlie Rich, mix both the exuberance of youth with a knowing nod of approval from those elders not yet struck down with Alzheimer's.

Of course one would hope that in time, Kitty Daisy and Lewis eventually catch up with the rest of the 21st Century and create something wholly withstanding and original of their own - after all, mum Ingrid was in seminal post-punk outfit The Raincoats. Until then, 'Kitty, Daisy And Lewis' is a gratifying, if confusing, advert of their musical dexterity that defies belief on one hand yet somehow resonates the joy of youthful innocence with the other.

6/10

Dom Gourlay