Charlie Dore - Cheapskate Lullabyes (2011)

Dore’s voice is small, pearly and oddly timeless the Hopper etching on the cover is from 1922 and her songs consider life in all its cheapskatery and riches. The sound is a sophisticated acoustic chamber-pop with vintage-jazzy overtones. Song titles are a clue to everything: “Cleaning Out my House”, “His Wife”, “The Last Laugh”. Domestic music which deserves to find its way into more homes. Respected singer/songwriter at the top of her game delivers eclectic set of contemporary alt folk-country with punchy takes on infidelity, debt, death and desire Charlie’s, ”Cheapskate Lullabyes”. Her seventh album and first set of originals since 2006, is an eclectic collection of genre-defying musical styles which she describes as ‘borrowed from folk, country, Django Reinhardt and the Beatles’. What impresses is about this album; the remarkable song writing credentials of the musical partnership of Charlie Dore and Julian Littman.
The ten songs wear the two theatrical masks well, capturing both tragedy and comedy and often simultaneously in the same song. Big Boned Girl for instance is full of wry humour but is heartbreakingly accurate at the same time and could easily become the anthem for all the world’s beautifully big boned girls. The same could be said for His Wife, which encapsulates the feelings of many women caught up in the hopelessness of an adulterous affair, but expressed with almost hilarious resignation. The songs are personal, charming and instantly accessible. This album therefore takes no getting into at all, it’s all there immediately, from the wistful “Liontamer”, the intensely personal “Milk Teeth”, cleverly disguised as a jazzy lounge bar crooner, to the title song, a lullaby to brighten even our darkest nights. “I’m Cleaning Out My House” is revisited in ‘unplugged’ form, one of the songs originally heard on the excellent “Hula Valley Songbook” album from 2009, which makes a welcome return both as an apt inclusion on this album and as a live favourite. The final song on the album is the only solo Charlie Dore composition, the achingly personal “Fifty Pound Father”, a reflective song that asks more questions than there are answers for. Joined once again by the Hula Valley Orchestra featuring Dudley Phillips on double bass and Jake Walker on violin, together with Jim Duguid on drums and Julian Littman taking care of guitars, lap steel, piano, drums, mandolin and ukulele, Charlie Dore once again proves that she is one of our little known national treasures, whose inimitable voice should be heard by all.


01.  Liontamer   (3:47)
02.  A Man Walk Into A Bar   (4:48)
03.  Milk Teeth   (4:37)
04.  Cheapskate Lullabyes   (3:19)
05.  His Wife   (4:05)
06.  Big Boned Girl   (3:29)
07.  Australia   (4:03)
08.  I’m Cleaning Out My House (Unplugged)   (3:56)
09.  The Last Laugh   (3:32)
10.  Fifty Pound Father   (4:50)

Notes
Released: 13 june, 2011
Genre: Pop, Folk
Length: 40:27
© 2011 Black Ink Music