Last year Lorraine Leckie decided to take a sabbatical from her band The Demons to focus on creating this seven track release. However it’s confusing as to why her debut solo effort would require that level of commitment.
Every song on Martini Eyes is stripped down to its bear essentials and feels like it was written in the length of time it took to play it. There’s an unnerving nursery rhyme feel in the repetition and imagery (“it’s a serious matter you little mad hatter”). You could call it twee, if it wasn’t so dark.
Leckie’s voice adds a lot to the unsettling tone. She sounds like a sweet girl who has been ravaged by a forty-a-day habit. It’s the sound of lost innocence which permeates through every track here.
Opener Don’t Giggle At The Corpse talks a young child through how to behave properly at a funeral. Later on Hillbilly starts off playfully enough (“Hillbilly take a little trippy back to Mississippi”) before ending with narrator awaiting execution with the disturbing admittance “I ain’t sorry for what I done… She deserved it”.
Unfortunately, in this guise, Leckie appears to be a bit of a one trick pony. There’s not enough variety in the style or mood to warrant repeated listens. All the songs have their basis in sweet repetitive melodies but with a twist (be it a minor inflection, a sinister lyric or both). The surprise factor soon becomes dull and sometimes even a bit desperate.
The worst offender is I Met A Man. Over a jaunty piano accompaniment Leckie lists a number of encounters with gentlemen (“I met a man in a café in Milan….”; “I met a man in a bar in Japan…”) before revealing she will be smuggling drugs on their behalf. It may be a critique on the naivety of those affiliated with the drugs trade but when the melody is as rewarding as “I know a song that will get on your nerves”, the whole thing becomes pointless.
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There are a few moments where Leckie allows herself some freedom. Penultimate track Listen To The Girl has a tortured Martha Wainright quality, wheezy “Freewheelin’” harmonica and a gut wrenchingly bleak finale. To hear her voice crack as she sings “Find yourself… Even if it hurts” is one of the few moments where Leckie’s songs transcend the boundaries she sets for herself.
However, despite its brevity, overall Martini Eyes begins to drag as soon as you suss out the formula Lorraine Leckie is working with. Still, there are enough glimpses of a natural melodic gift to suggest that if she lets her guard down in future, we may have something worth investigating.
Lorraine Leckie online
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