"Winter Came Around Too Fast" by Sophie Hadlum
Review
I hope that by now, many of you will have downloaded, played & enjoyed "Hot Music Live Presents Volume Two" (https://hotmusiclivepresents.bandcamp.com/album/hot-music-live-presents-volume-two)
I am already receiving a lot of appreciative feedback on the collection & individual tracks, not least the twenty first one, "Land of the Long White Cloud" by Sophie Hadlum, not least because it is rather different to the other pieces & so intrigues listeners. If you don't yet know why is different nor why it might intrigue, then I recommend a listen at your earliest convenience.
Now Sophie has just released (today) a follow up to her album of earlier this year, ‘Far From A Machine' namely the song "Winter Came Around Too Fast", written a couple of years ago & now recorded for us.
You can for the moment check it out at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d0xBmS627A&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3-IAtr2HGfjP-aNCfB3KVmix0c6SLx_k2SL8-0IwaLXtrHcKfhqG0vjE8
Produced & recorded like her album by Ian Todd (who also made the affecting video above), the song is rather different to that on our album in some respects, which is helpful as not only does it show Sophie's range as a solo writer & performer, but frankly the album is so individual & outside conventional genres that describing it is stretching my skills. This new song however has a fragile jazz ballad feel & one of the things it certainly shares with the earlier release is Sophie's way with melodies of the haunting sort, this time complemented by lyrics which fit the mood like a cosy woollen glove on a frozen hand in December.
Elegiac, the song evokes the season perfectly & if you are rather sated with seasonal songs which extol reindeer & sleigh bells & would prefer something more in tune with our own actual winter experiences & true feelings then this is for you. Empathy not fantasy.
I loved it & it has the air of a "classic': a timeless song which could have been composed any time & which I hope lasts for a very long time. Think of crisp winter walks in the Warwickshire countryside full of mildly melancholic thought. Perhaps as Sophie suggests, we should file it under "Cold Music Live" too....
