Mama: Press

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
(Fly Like A Sprite Records)
Mama is [Sarah] McQuaid and fellow Cornish songwriter Zoe Pollock. The pair of them wrote all but one of the songs on Crow Coyote Buffalo – with a single credit for Pollock and Martin Glover (more on that later). Together they’ve come up with something quite different, a collection of psych-flavoured country and folk-rock songs, treated with an almost arid / acid, wasted desert groove – not the sort of thing we expect from two Penzance based musicians. Indeed, it’s names like Josephine Foster and Buffy Sainte-Marie that most readily come to mind rather than the usual UK folk suspects (see above). Of course, Zoe Pollock will always be best known for her 1991 hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”, and here it’s revisited, stripped of its mall-bothering coagulated dairy and transformed into something far more satisfying, a swirling Eastern inspired pop gem. Release it again as a single and I’d buy it.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
(Fly Like A Sprite)
(4 stars)
Nu-folk, freak-folk, psych-folk; call it what you will. The exploratory, inventive seeds scattered by the likes of Andy Hankdog, Jo And Danny, and Michael Tyack continue to bring forth fruit in every season. Crow Coyote Buffalo comes out of the far West with a magical, mystic aura, conjuring visions of diverse vistas ... India, the Plains, the Waite Tarot, and raves.

Back in the early 90s Zoë Pollock charted with her ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’ after Youth remixed it, while Sarah McQuaid was immersing herself in the traditional music of her native Appalachia. Years later they would meet outside a school gate in Cornwall and shortly thereafter were combining two very singular voices. Helped by flautist Tiffany Bryant and multi-skilled Andy Jarvis from the acclaimed but short-lived Thistletown, they’ve come up with an enticing, incantatory collection.

As in a trip or a dream, sounds and elements gather and slip. There’s a Tim Buckley tinge to ‘The Fool Of Spring’, and a mariachi hue to ‘Dancing Girl’. There’s always another voice echoing, through the repeated ‘hello’ of the title track and the spoken-word interludes, notably of ‘Western’. Finally, Zoë’s eerie reworking of ‘Sunshine’ features as a bonus.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
Fly Like A Sprite
(3 stars)
Zoë Pollock had a Top 5 hit in 1990 with the club anthem Sunshine On A Rainy Day (reconstructed here as a rural ramble). Now she’s teamed up with American-born Sarah McQuaid for a pleasingly maverick mix that, at best, recalls both the eccentricity of The Incredible String Band and the pastoral narratives of Lal Waterson.

MAMA
Crow Coyote Buffalo
Fly Like a Sprite Records
(3 stars)
Take a picture of this: Janis Joplin’s freewheeling spirit crossed with Joni Mitchell’s lyrical density. Add a tincture of The Roches’ earthy harmonies, and you’ve got a whisper of what Mama offer on their tingling debut, Crow Coyote Buffalo. Mama are a duo featuring Sarah McQuaid, a long-established folk singer and guitarist, and Zoë Pollock, whose club anthem Sunshine On A Rainy Day features here as a raggle taggle bonus track. Both are now based in Cornwall, and their musical collision is a fruitful one. The yin and yang of their gorgeously earthy voices is full of wide-eyed wonder at the world. Aquí Me Pinté Yo (For Frida Kahlo) is a standout, with traces of Lisa Hannigan’s melodic sensibility and a decade more experience to play with. Pastoral chaos with style.
Download tracks: Liquid Sunshine, Dancing Girl

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
The recently released album from Mama, Crow Coyote Buffalo resembles a lavishly embroidered patchwork blanket of musical styles and intricacies, each track different from the last, but still interlinked with substance and quality compositions. With themes as diverse as the biblical story of Salome and John The Baptist (‘Dancing Girl’) to looking at your hands whilst dreaming (‘Western’), this is no ordinary album.

American-born folk artist Sarah McQuaid and the former UK pop star Zoë Pollock, met after Sarah relocated from Ireland to her present base near Penzance. While Zoë supplies the melodic hooks and with Sarah adding lyrics and guitar licks, the pair have formed a unique and distinctive sound which will surely see then take the festival season of 2009 by storm ...

Uncommon Folk
Regular readers of Womenfolk might be familiar with a post we wrote back in 2005 about Zoë Young.

Young, who went only by her first name professionally, released two albums in the 90’s: 1991’s pop-infused Scarlet Red And Blue and 1996’s more rock driven Hammer. But it was shortly after the release of Hammer that Young seemed to fade away from the limelight.

Now, after more than a decade away from music scene, Young has remerged. This time, she and fellow songwriter Sarah McQuaid have created Mama, a folk duo who have just recently released their debut album, Crow Coyote Buffalo.

Recorded largely in McQuaid’s home in Penzance in Cornwall, England, the music of Mama combines an organic mix of traditional folk with flourishes of Eastern influences and spiked with dashes of 60’s psychedelic mood. Mariachis, trumpets, and the ukelele are prevelant through many of the songs here and each add their own unique flair to these original compositions.

Young’s voice is still unmistakable: a powerful and capable instrument that previous fans will quickly embrace. McQuaid’s is more subdued and softer, and together, they harmonize beautifully.

Standouts include ‘The Fool Of Spring,’ the album’s opener which is both jubilant and tribal.

On ‘Dancing Girl,’ trumpets and block drums help to create a hypnotic trance which give way to an explosion of sounds mid-way through the song.

Also included is a Mama-ized remake of Young’s well known ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day,’ originally found on her debut album.

Both Young and McQuaid have created a very unique record with Crow Coyote Buffalo. One that will require several listens to truly absorb.

Crow Coyote Buffalo is available through CDBaby and through Mama’s official site where those interested can listen to the entire album.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo (4½ stars)
Fly Like A Sprite
Mama are former popstar Zoë Pollock and trad/folk supremo Sarah McQuaid, who met purely by chance outside the gates of a school in west Cornwall. The mundane, yet happily fateful setting seems respectfully unglamorous for a meeting of such accomplished adventurers. In 1990, Pollock had a top 5 UK chart hit with ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’ but abandoned the world of pop for more obscure musical paths, recording under monikers such as Hephzibah Broom. Having settled in Land’s End, she now spends her winters in a remote farmhouse and summers in a yurt, a portable, felt-covered home favoured by nomads. McQuaid is an American-born traditional folk artist who has relocated from Ireland to St Buryan, near Penzance, splitting her time between Chicago, Ireland and Spain. An acclaimed acoustic guitarist, she has released a number of albums before Mama’s first offering, the most recent being I Won’t Go Home Till Morning, a work of old-time Appalachian songs learnt from her late mother.

The result of this chance partnership is Crow Coyote Buffalo, a truly sublime work encompassing a range of styles and themes as rich as the ladies’ combined travels, experiences which beat at the heart of their work. Joining the duo on the album are Tiffany Bryant (flute) and Andy Jarvis (drums, percussion, trumpet, harmonium, accordion), both members of quirky Cornish collective Thistletown and the wonderfully labelled “prog-folk” group, Rosemarie Band. While comparisons have been made to Gillian Welch and Crosby, Stills & Nash, Mama’s sound swirls with a blend of genres, from psychedelia-tinged folk to sparse country and “unexpected Mariachi flourishes”. Pollock’s voice is potent with energy, reflecting the kind of tones associated with outdoor fire rituals or desert tribe melodies – a husky, rich sound perfectly complimented by McQuaid’s expert string work.

The wisdom and maturity of experience gives the record its canvas, and yet it is the wide-eyed, childlike sense of wonder that animates Crow Coyote Buffalo. When Pollock calls “hello?” on the album’s titular track, inspired by her journeys through Arizona, it is the desire for exploration and the adventure that resonate, a theme found throughout. Reading their track notes and falling through the panoramic expanse of the work, it is clear that each song is inspired by and relishes in the mystical and exotic – whether it’s the classical Indian storytelling dances on ‘Kathakali Boy’, finding inner strength and inspiration in ‘Aquí Me Pinté Yo’ (an ode to Frida Kahlo), or becoming lost in the dance of powerful, symbolic images in ‘The Lovers’, a swaying, hypnotic nod to Pamela Colman Smith, (another Cornwall resident who designed the world’s bestselling tarot deck). Fittingly, the album ends with an update of Pollock’s famous single; ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day 2008’ enjoys an evolved incarnation which transforms the feel-good pop hit into a dancing, sitar-inspired wonder, spinning with folk flutes, Eastern melodies and Spanish trumpets.

Released on the women’s own Fly Like A Sprite label, with artwork by Sarah’s husband, and 100% recyclable packaging designed by fellow Cornwall resident, Sarah Turner, Mama’s first offering is a wonderfully organic and natural affair. Listening to Crow Coyote Buffalo is an instant pathway to distant realms, skirt-spinning dances in fields of flowers, and shamanistic journeys under bright sunny days and star-filled nights. A beautiful, peyote-kissed desert/forest dream.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
Fly Like A Sprite Records
Mama is the pairing of two moms who met when picking their kids from school. That one small village in Cornwall had managed to draw in both Zoe ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’ Pollock and Sarah McQuaid shows that fate does work in mysterious ways. Crow Coyote Buffalo creates an image of wide open spaces for nature’s brush to sweep across majestically. Similarly there is something of the wilderness about the songs on the album. There is a sparseness to the sound that tempts you to fill the gaps, hearing that which is not there as well as that which is.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
Fly Like A Sprite Records
(4 stars)
Mama – so called because they met at a west Cornwall school gate – are Zoë Pollock and Sarah McQuaid. This unlikely pairing of none-more-’90s club diva and Appalachian folk puritan have made a captivating album. The title track has a sumptuous southwestern desert echo, steel-stringed guitar plucked over a rattle of bells. ‘The Lovers’ is a medievalist celebration of Pamela Colman Smith, illustrator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck; ‘Aquí Me Pinté Yo’ sets to jaunty melisma the journals of Frida Kahlo.

Mama
Crow Coyote Buffalo
Having reviewed countless albums this year, I thought Henry Priestman’s The Chronicles Of Modern Life was my favourite, but this late in the year comes an absolute belter to rival it. Not as instantly jaw-dropping as Chronicles, but with repeated listens Crow Coyote Buffalo by Cornwall based Mama grows and grows in stature. What makes this album so special is its sheer diversity. You never know where it will take you next, from the Eastern rhythms of ‘Kathakali Boy’ via the hypnotic ‘The Lovers’ to a complete reworking of Zoë’s early nineties hit ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’. That might sound like an odd choice of cover until you discover that half of Mama is Zoë herself, having undergone a complete transformation from the pop star of yesteryear into the delicate ethereal voice of Mama.

With Sarah McQuaid adding her voice and open tuned guitar to Zoë’s ukulele, the mix is heady; add the flute of Tiffany Bryant and the multi instrumentalism of Andy Jarvis and it becomes an absolute aural delight. The progressive folk (no fingers in ears here) tackles such obscure subjects as Indian dance, Tarot card illustrator Pamela Colman Smith and Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Lyrically the album soars when dealing with these unusual subjects, and on ‘Western’ poetry is read in Morrison style to regal us with fantastic imagery.

This all sounds very interesting but what makes the album so special is the title track. I played it on air this morning and within five minutes one of my colleagues had stopped what he was doing and rushed to the studio to find out where this heavenly sound had emerged. It really is that good. Even if the album as a whole doesn’t topple Henry it will still be number two and the title track is a no contest for my song of the year. Add the ecologically friendly packaging and you have an album of sheer class which with repeated listens will I’m sure become a staple of many specialist shows. It might not make mainstream pop playlists, but is that really such a bad thing?

Crow Coyote Buffalo
Mama
Mama are Zoë Pollock and Sarah McQuaid. You may remember Zoë from her recently re-recorded early nineties hit ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’. Since those dance crazed days she has undergone something of a transformation: the new version of the song is a world influenced acoustic affair that sounds much better than the original. You may also have come across her under the pseudonym Hepzibah Broom with a seriously off the wall trip-folk wig-out release on the Red Deer Club label.

Sarah McQuaid is a highly talented guitarist and singer who is equally at home with Irish trad or Appalachian folk. Her recent album I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning is a celebration of old-time Appalachian folk, with Sarah’s arrangements punctuated by her own compositions and a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s classic ‘Ode to Billie Joe’. Sarah and Zoë met in Cornwall where they have both ended up after living and working all over the world; they actually met at the school gates dropping their children off. They struck up a friendship and then Mama was born.

Crow Coyote Buffalo is the result of this musical partnership and it’s every bit as eclectic and varied as their musical backgrounds. It draws on every strand of their influences and weaves them into a very unexpected tapestry that is really hard to sum up succinctly, two pagan goddesses channeling the ghost of Jim Morrison via 60’s acid folk would be one stab at it ...

The beautiful title track is infused with Native American imagery and is as much storytelling as song; set against sparse percussion it is a mesmerising experience. Each and every track draws you in to a fresh new world; it has a whole different frame of reference to anything around at the moment. This is without doubt the most original thing I have heard this year. Mind you, the first song ‘The Fool Of Spring’ doesn't do the album justice, I found myself skipping it every time I listened to it.

Crow Coyote Buffalo is an album that seems to shift and move on every listen. I didn’t mention Jim Morrison lightly as they tap a vein of poetry and imagery that the Doors mined mightily in their work; here it has a decidedly feminine and natural cast to it.

Challenging, yet relaxing and uplifting, Crow Coyote Buffalo is a very pleasant surprise.

Click here to read BBC Cornwall web feature, including links to live interviews with both Zoë and Sarah.

Click here to read a feature on Sarah that appeared in Cornwall Today magazine (www.cornwalltoday.co.uk).

Click here to read a feature on Zoë that appeared in Cornwall Today magazine (www.cornwalltoday.co.uk).