Confessing Evangelical

Thursday 12 October was John Peel Day and, to mark this, eMusic's latest "eMusic Dozen" features twelve John Peel Favorites.

Now, to be honest, I didn't listen to John Peel all that much while he was alive. He was notorious for playing very left-field music, and typically you'd turn on his show to find yourself in the middle of a twenty-five minute slab of Polish industrial techno. But, as people used to say about Panorama, while I may not have listened to his show, it was good to know it was there.

Peel's favourite band was The Fall, and I already knew I liked them, so I wasn't expecting any major revelations through looking at this list of twelve tracks. But one that caught my eye was an album called "Not the Tremblin' Kind" by someone I'd never heard of called Laura Cantrell. The description began:

Like Peel, New Yorker Cantrell is a DJ too — having hosted the terrific "Radio Thrift Shop" on East Orange, NJ, listener-supported standby WFMU, one of the closest things in the States to a station promulgating Peel-ish eclecticism.

So I thought, OK, she's a New York DJ, so it's probably going to be some unlistenable dance cacophony. But hey, she looks quite presentable (never forget this: I am very shallow) and it's a cracking title, so let's have a listen.

This might be a good opportunity for you to have a listen too.

And by crikey, it's absolutely gorgeous. Modern country/folk, reminiscent of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, or Tres Chicas (another eMusic discovery). I immediately downloaded it and have spent the rest of the day listening to it (alternating with my other download of the day, from The Piney Gir Country Roadshow, also worth a listen).

John Peel described Laura Cantrell's album as:

"My favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life."

Which is somewhat unexpected given the type of music with which he was generally associated. But then, life is full of pleasant surprises (a number of which have, for me, been coming via eMusic over the past few months).