In the span of two releases, British singer/songwriter Kate Walsh has made a name for herself as a songbird with a lilting voice who can pen simple couplets that spur thoughts of the gentler side of Joni Mitchell. Prior to releasing her sophomore effort, Tim's House, in 2007, Walsh's single "Your Song" was placed (with a wink and a big smile) in the television show "Private Practice," which stars — wait for it — a certain flame-haired actress of the same name. The confusion between the two very different women certainly wasn't bad press, and the exposure of her music on a top-rated TV show only helped clarify which of the two of them strummed a guitar for a living.
Although she now lives in cosmopolitan Brighton, Walsh was raised in a quaint fishing village on the east coast of England. The angst and frustration of not fitting in to small town life and its eccentricities can occasionally bleed through in her lyrics: "Talk Of The Town," for example, takes a melancholy swipe at the mean girls with whom she duked it out in Burnham as a teen.
Tim's House, released in the U.S. under the Verve Forecast label, is named after her producer, Tim Bidwell, in whose living room it was recorded. Its sparse, airy quality is a natural continuation of what she'd established on her decidedly soothing debut, 2003's Clocktower Park.
In addition to her own recordings, Walsh can be heard on fellow Brighton singer/songwriter Conrad Vingoe's EP, Great White Hope, also produced by Bidwell.
Provenance: Burnham-On-Crouch, England
Latest release: Tim's House (2007)
© 2008 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Kate Walsh
