hazel winter

To read archived reviews for Put Away The Sharp Knives click here

***
The Lowdown: 'Death Row Bride' could almost be PJ Harvey's answer to Nick Cave's kiss-and-tell doomed romance masterpiece 'The Boatman's Call'. It likens a relationship to drowning in a claustrophobic room, asphyxiation and murder. Minimal and discordant, snarls of noise scar even the most tender ballads and guitar strings are scraped like rusty nails snagging on baby-soft skin. but best of all is Hazel's provincial non-singing Northern voice picking at death/love metaphors like scabs that won't be left alone.
Best Tracks: 'Calm'

***
Second outing from the West Country's first lady of noirish guitar blues.
There is a linear connection between PJ Harvey and Kristin Hersh which Winter walks, especially with Harvey sidekick John Parish lending a hand here. That doesn't stop her vocal witchiness and bile-spitting making a convincing dent, aided by the production of Portishead's Adrian Utley and Jim Barr. Parish produces Surgery in raw, gnarly Steve Albini fashion, strewn with bottom-of-the-well guitars and cymbal splash, while Utley's production elevates Pindown, another paranoid excursion to relationship hell on the back of Stig Manley's slide guitar.

Well, aside from La Winter, finally following up 00's striking 'Put Away the Sharp Knives', there are people appearing on this album who'd normally be associated with Portishead and PJ Harvey, so it'd be fair to assume it's not going to be a laugh a minute. Indeed, this is the case; 'Death Row Bride' is the sound of a quite unhinging ferocity, though it's tempered with the kind of reserved focus you could probably expect from, say, Kristin Hersh. Ultimately it's the sort of claustrophobic affair that's easier to admire than to actually love, but there's some decent somgwriting on show here - 'Poorhand Well' is an appealingly swampy romp, while 'Calm' is a terrific burst of whispery nastiness, and 'White' fairly crackles. Esoteric rather than essential.

‘Death Row Bride’ makes for uneasy listening. Sunk deep beneath a well of soiled guitars and a bass so heavy it sinks through the floor, Hazel Winter purrs and crows, willingly facing her demons with an audience in tow. In places it’s spartan and unhelpfully insular, leading you up the grunge path before turning round and twatting you over the head with a shard of buoyant riffage, but across the board it’s a suffocatingly harsh collection of music that paints Hazel Winter as a lost soul in desperate need of salvation. A thoroughly disturbing, thoroughly compelling listen.

Bleak hearts and fuzzy murder ballads a go go on the fabulous new album 'Death Row Bride' due out February 16th.

Hill Views - The Bride Stripped Bare
Following on from her highly acclaimed solo debut, Put Away the Sharp Knives, the new album, Death Row Bride, shows little evidence of a thaw in the bleak Winter landscape. The themes are alienation, loss, the emotional pain that human beings are heir to, and the tone throughout is relentlessly dark. The music itself disturbs: deep, menacing bass throbs, nonlinear chord sequences, guitar patterns scattered like shards of glass, all over irregular, off-centre rhythms. And then there’s Hazel’s voice itself, a startling thing, switching effortlessly from an almost plaintive whisper to an anguished howl.
The album’s opener, ‘Going on Down’, sets the tone with a subterranean riff and shimmering guitar. ‘Surgery’ sees Hazel pulling no punches lyrically: ‘You feasted on me … giving it open-smile surgery’, she intones bleakly. ‘Loving you is like giving blood.’ Quite.
The folk influences do shine through, notably on ‘Like a Murder’ and ‘Poor Hand Well’ which starts off almost jaunty, before changing its mind and transforming itself into the soundtrack to nightmares in the dollshouse. But the album rocks. ‘Something’s Wrong’ has a bass rumble so deep it’s heading for the Earth’s core. On ‘Pindown’, Hazel sings like she’s being accompanied by her evil twin. ‘Calm’ is anything but, a harrowing, hiccupping vocal that you can almost feel tugging at your sleeve. But there is also a dark humour at work; the title track is a glorious racket with a flat metallic vocal that reminded me of Madcap-era Syd Barrett.
This is a searingly personal record, by turns hauntingly melodic and gut-wrenchingly discordant. Its great achievement, however, is to be raw and confessional without once descending into self-pity. In that sense, it’s a cathartic experience. But caveat auditor – these rich, vivid tales do not make comfortable listening.
Adrian Corrigan

Porter Cellar Bar - Bath - 29th January 2004
Hazel Winter is an anomaly, in fact, that is where her heart, and her art, lies; she is an anomalic model. Even her name is cool, and fits perfectly – is it real?
Think those grisly stories where a child’s doll turns out to be alive, malevolent and vicious, razor teeth and soulless eyes framed by yellow yarn hair, painted-on freckles and a pretty frock.

Well, Hazel didn’t have a pretty frock on, just jeans and T-shirt, but she has the prettiest voice, all breathy and feminine, somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Mary Hopkin. But, as the person next to me said when she strode onto the stage 'Ooh, she’s got such a hard face.' That ain’t the half of it, because the music comes next.

The music actually started gently tonight, partly because she didn’t realise she was contracted for two sets, so went out solo, starting with The Sun Shines Bright On My Old North Country Home, like someone from Cold Mountain. Ominousness, never far away, quickly crept in with a Black Dog song, her Telecaster managing to sound like a serrated knife being extracted from… probably those noisy gits at the bar.

The noisy gits were no problem when the second set started, now with drummer, bassist and long time cohort, guitarist Stig Manley, filling the tiny stage. Ominousness was now raised to a level of perfection, all instruments playing it like masters. Stig plays his guitar like it’s a Theremin; very rarely do you hear something you’d recognise as a guitar lick, and thank god for that. And it’s not wild and crazy free noise stuff, he’s well in control of it.
The whole band is well in control, for that matter, even though the music often sounds random, great slabs of sound sliding and intersecting around Hazel’s ingenuous voice. The only problem is you can’t hear the lyrics very well in a venue like this, or you’d know they aren’t at all ingenuous. They are clearly from the dark side, from “the goddess of filth” that lurks behind the sweet voice and the source of all the implied violence of the music. The girl of my nightmares.
CHARLEY DUNLAP

Noir-ish confessions on this second full-band LP from the Durham-born songwriter. The guitar accompaniment is raw, stark and sparse to allow Winter's tortured whispering, cooing and choking to have its full, shocking effect.

Another sweet-voiced singer songwriter? Er.. no. Hazel Winter's new album, the delightfully titled 'Death Row Bride' kicks off with the sub-metallic fuzzy guitar rant 'Going on Down', in which Hazel stakes a claim for goddess-like spikiness. It would be wrong to dismiss Hazel as a PJ Harvey wannabe, though. She is too folk and too metal. Backed by menacing gothic drums, slide and looped guitars, she appears to strip down the metallic grandeur of Evanescence, especially on the crunchy Velvet Underground guitar-toned 'Pindown'. She has a deceptively girly delivery, but there's an ever-present atmosphere of menace, helped by the fact that members of Portishead are involved. Hazel once played guitar in an all-girl R&B covers band. Gorilla My Dreams. No, I don't remember them either, but they wore leopard skin apparently. Now that's the kind of thing that would stick in your mind.
John Coleman


		To read archived reviews for Put Away The Sharp Knives click here * The Lowdown: 'Death Row Bride' could almost be PJ Harvey's answer to Nick Cave's kiss-and-tell doomed romance masterpiece 'The Boatman's Call'. It likens a relationship to drowning in a claustrophobic room, asphyxiation and murder. Minimal and discordant, snarls of noise scar even the most tender ballads and guitar strings are scraped like rusty nails snagging on baby-soft skin. but best of all is Hazel's provincial non-singing Northern voice picking at death/love metaphors like scabs that won't be left alone. Best Tracks: 'Calm' * Second outing from the West Country's first lady of noirish guitar blues. There is a linear connection between PJ Harvey and Kristin Hersh which Winter walks, especially with Harvey sidekick John Parish lending a hand here. That doesn't stop her vocal witchiness and bile-spitting making a convincing dent, aided by the production of Portishead's Adrian Utley and Jim Barr. Parish produces Surgery in raw, gnarly Steve Albini fashion, strewn with bottom-of-the-well guitars and cymbal splash, while Utley's production elevates Pindown, another paranoid excursion to relationship hell on the back of Stig Manley's slide guitar. Well, aside from La Winter, finally following up 00's striking 'Put Away the Sharp Knives', there are people appearing on this album who'd normally be associated with Portishead and PJ Harvey, so it'd be fair to assume it's not going to be a laugh a minute. Indeed, this is the case; 'Death Row Bride' is the sound of a quite unhinging ferocity, though it's tempered with the kind of reserved focus you could probably expect from, say, Kristin Hersh. Ultimately it's the sort of claustrophobic affair that's easier to admire than to actually love, but there's some decent somgwriting on show here - 'Poorhand Well' is an appealingly swampy romp, while 'Calm' is a terrific burst of whispery nastiness, and 'White' fairly crackles. Esoteric rather than essential. ‘Death Row Bride’ makes for uneasy listening. Sunk deep beneath a well of soiled guitars and a bass so heavy it sinks through the floor, Hazel Winter purrs and crows, willingly facing her demons with an audience in tow. In places it’s spartan and unhelpfully insular, leading you up the grunge path before turning round and twatting you over the head with a shard of buoyant riffage, but across the board it’s a suffocatingly harsh collection of music that paints Hazel Winter as a lost soul in desperate need of salvation. A thoroughly disturbing, thoroughly compelling listen. Bleak hearts and fuzzy murder ballads a go go on the fabulous new album 'Death Row Bride' due out February 16th. Hill Views - The Bride Stripped Bare Following on from her highly acclaimed solo debut, Put Away the Sharp Knives, the new album, Death Row Bride, shows little evidence of a thaw in the bleak Winter landscape. The themes are alienation, loss, the emotional pain that human beings are heir to, and the tone throughout is relentlessly dark. The music itself disturbs: deep, menacing bass throbs, nonlinear chord sequences, guitar patterns scattered like shards of glass, all over irregular, off-centre rhythms. And then there’s Hazel’s voice itself, a startling thing, switching effortlessly from an almost plaintive whisper to an anguished howl. The album’s opener, ‘Going on Down’, sets the tone with a subterranean riff and shimmering guitar. ‘Surgery’ sees Hazel pulling no punches lyrically: ‘You feasted on me … giving it open-smile surgery’, she intones bleakly. ‘Loving you is like giving blood.’ Quite. The folk influences do shine through, notably on ‘Like a Murder’ and ‘Poor Hand Well’ which starts off almost jaunty, before changing its mind and transforming itself into the soundtrack to nightmares in the dollshouse. But the album rocks. ‘Something’s Wrong’ has a bass rumble so deep it’s heading for the Earth’s core. On ‘Pindown’, Hazel sings like she’s being accompanied by her evil twin. ‘Calm’ is anything but, a harrowing, hiccupping vocal that you can almost feel tugging at your sleeve. But there is also a dark humour at work; the title track is a glorious racket with a flat metallic vocal that reminded me of Madcap-era Syd Barrett. This is a searingly personal record, by turns hauntingly melodic and gut-wrenchingly discordant. Its great achievement, however, is to be raw and confessional without once descending into self-pity. In that sense, it’s a cathartic experience. But caveat auditor – these rich, vivid tales do not make comfortable listening. Adrian Corrigan Porter Cellar Bar - Bath - 29th January 2004 Hazel Winter is an anomaly, in fact, that is where her heart, and her art, lies; she is an anomalic model. Even her name is cool, and fits perfectly – is it real? Think those grisly stories where a child’s doll turns out to be alive, malevolent and vicious, razor teeth and soulless eyes framed by yellow yarn hair, painted-on freckles and a pretty frock. Well, Hazel didn’t have a pretty frock on, just jeans and T-shirt, but she has the prettiest voice, all breathy and feminine, somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Mary Hopkin. But, as the person next to me said when she strode onto the stage 'Ooh, she’s got such a hard face.' That ain’t the half of it, because the music comes next. The music actually started gently tonight, partly because she didn’t realise she was contracted for two sets, so went out solo, starting with The Sun Shines Bright On My Old North Country Home, like someone from Cold Mountain. Ominousness, never far away, quickly crept in with a Black Dog song, her Telecaster managing to sound like a serrated knife being extracted from… probably those noisy gits at the bar. The noisy gits were no problem when the second set started, now with drummer, bassist and long time cohort, guitarist Stig Manley, filling the tiny stage. Ominousness was now raised to a level of perfection, all instruments playing it like masters. Stig plays his guitar like it’s a Theremin; very rarely do you hear something you’d recognise as a guitar lick, and thank god for that. And it’s not wild and crazy free noise stuff, he’s well in control of it. The whole band is well in control, for that matter, even though the music often sounds random, great slabs of sound sliding and intersecting around Hazel’s ingenuous voice. The only problem is you can’t hear the lyrics very well in a venue like this, or you’d know they aren’t at all ingenuous. They are clearly from the dark side, from “the goddess of filth” that lurks behind the sweet voice and the source of all the implied violence of the music. The girl of my nightmares. CHARLEY DUNLAP Noir-ish confessions on this second full-band LP from the Durham-born songwriter. The guitar accompaniment is raw, stark and sparse to allow Winter's tortured whispering, cooing and choking to have its full, shocking effect. Another sweet-voiced singer songwriter? Er.. no. Hazel Winter's new album, the delightfully titled 'Death Row Bride' kicks off with the sub-metallic fuzzy guitar rant 'Going on Down', in which Hazel stakes a claim for goddess-like spikiness. It would be wrong to dismiss Hazel as a PJ Harvey wannabe, though. She is too folk and too metal. Backed by menacing gothic drums, slide and looped guitars, she appears to strip down the metallic grandeur of Evanescence, especially on the crunchy Velvet Underground guitar-toned 'Pindown'. She has a deceptively girly delivery, but there's an ever-present atmosphere of menace, helped by the fact that members of Portishead are involved. Hazel once played guitar in an all-girl R&B covers band. Gorilla My Dreams. No, I don't remember them either, but they wore leopard skin apparently. Now that's the kind of thing that would stick in your mind. John Coleman
		all content copyright Hazel Winter 2007