Kat Flint - Christopher, You're A Soldier Now (Albino)
UK release date: 28 April 2008
Cast a handful of stones around randomly now, and you are pretty much assured that you will hit more than a few young guitar-toting songstresses in the face. Add in an affected Scottish accent and you should actively try to get them with the whole fistful - Amy MacDonald, you know who I'm on about. But it's much too easy to dismiss a whole group of artists because of Radio 2 hyping of one or two individuals.
Kat Flint clearly is a singer-songwriter, doubtless she has a guitar, and shame of all shames, she has a strong Scottish accent. But unlike MacDonald's glib tales of old rockers in love and mawkish bile, Christopher, You Are a Soldier Now packs in pathos and dry humour in equal measure.
With warm vocals, over simple guitars and military-brass salute, Flint tosses out lines juxtaposing the brutality and the seductiveness of a life in the services such as "glory hallelujah, hand up all we'll shoot you; everybody loves a man in uniform" in an modern, folksy prelude to Kate Bush's Army Dreamers. Deceptively sad, and incredibly good.
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