l u c i e t h o r n e
press
February 2010 bio/media release pdf
recent press for Black Across The Field:
Awarded 'Best Roots Album of 2009' by The Sydney Morning Herald.
Without exaggeration Black Across The Field is as good as anything I've heard this year... Growling with warm tube overdrive, stinging like Neil Young... this is a diverse, profound album...with nuances subtle and breathtaking.
Martin Jones, Rhythms Magazine, March 2009
full review here
This is one of the finest female vocal albums released by an Australian in the last few years. The whole album - from her band, to production, to the songs -is first rate [and] will hopefully see her find the larger audience she deserves. Make the effort to seek this fine album out.
Readings Monthly, May 2009
This gentle chanteuse has delivered quiet perfection. There is such an intensity of feeling here... In mood and approach the closest comparison I can make is with Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball - moody folk, country noir... a collection of stories that speaks small but resonates much bigger. Thorne marks out her space with some fabulous sensuality.
Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald. Album of Week 21st March 2009
full review here
Thorne's songs are exquisite miniatures of distilled emotion, her melodies and harmonies are sublime, and the way she pits grinding guitars against that ethereal, sensual voice is like watching a thunderstorm in the distance. By turns dark and tender, Black Across The Field is a beautiful album.
David Curry, The Canberra Times, April 2009
This is music that can be tender and taut, full of the subtle nuances of real life as opposed to the black-and-white world of simple pop. There's tough guitar and autumnal shades, haunting slow-mo rock, Neil Young-esque guitar lines...And right up front is a voice with a quality that keeps drawing the listener in.
Noel Mengel, Courier Mail. Album of the Week 19th March 2009
full review here
Thorne cuts her own niche from the acoustic masses by specialising in gently percolating nocturnes that could be penned by PJ Harvey after waking in a Tasmanian poppy field. A bright star rising, and one worth all the attention she receives.
Andy Hazel, Inpress, March 2009
The production of the voice is a giant close-up of delicate emotional expression; every murmur, tongue flick and gentle pulse is significant. Thorne also has a gift for melody and, for the complete trifecta, writes thoughtful, intelligent lyrics that, as with Joni Mitchell, leave you pondering shades of meaning. Thorne's electric guitars paint gorgeous swaths in the stereo field... this is an album that deserves to be widely heard.
Ian Cuthbertson, ****, The Australian, April 2009
A spellbinding dark-folk storybook
Sarah Howells, Root N All, JMAG, March 2009
With the slow burn rock of Sun Kil Moon and the depth of voice of Joni Mitchell, Thorne is insidious in her ability to borrow down into your psyche, drawing you closer...she knows exactly what is required and when."
Chris Peken, Alternative Media Group, March 2009
full review here
This singer songwriter is the Australian PJ Harvey... possessing the punch of Cat Power, the country-rock hybrid of Emmylou Harris, and the wise words of Joni Mitchell...
Kathleen Noonan, The Courier Mail, June 2009
The opening track of Black Across The Field, As You Find It, is undoubtedly one of the loveliest songs you'll hear all year. With its brushed drums, cautious electric guitars and mellow piano playing, it's simply beautiful as Thorne's honey-like voice drifts over the top. Thorne is definitely a major talent in Australia's burgeoning folk singer-songwriter scene.
Patrick Lang, db magazine, April 2009
Dances between alt-folk blues and a PJ Harvey-style drone with production moving into Howling Bells territory at times...This album deserves multiple spins
Rave Magazine
Lucie Thorne hits the bullseye with album five
Billy Pinnell, ****, MAG
Live review from The Mullum Bowlo, 17/06/09; Martin Jones, 'Roots Down', Drum Media:
I'm still getting over the show South Coast singer/songwriter Lucie Thorne put on at the Mullumbimby Bowling Club last week. Maybe it's not specifically roots music in style, but in my book there's nothing more 'roots' than someone standing up there and spellbinding an audience with nothing but a guitar and a voice.
Switching between clean and just slightly driven channels on her little Mesa Boogie amp, adding a little colour with a tremelo pedal, Thorne accomplished what all great folk singers have - a genuine conversation/duet with her guitar. Thorne has put so much thought and feel into not only the structure but the tone of her live performance, that you don't miss the lack of a band for a second. And considering Thorne has gun bassist Dave Symes and drummer Hamish Stuart backing her on the new record - and live when they're available - that's a considerable achievement.
A solid crowd gathered at the intimate Bowling Club and hung off every breathy note, every warm ring of her guitar strings. Focusing predominantly on material from her latest album Black Across The Field, Thorne abandoned any premise of a setlist about three-quarters of the way through the show and granted requests or performed whatever popped into her head. It was a demonstration of power through grace and subtlety.
Live review from The Basement 15/04/08; Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald:
Thorne's smoked voice has a languidness and an urgency; ... a pop-folk gentleness but a rock tension. Her voice matches the way the songs simmer before bubbling up into something intense. Those mini explosions may be unexpected, but the strength of her songwriting is in creating a space where you are drawn in and carried on whatever winds prevail.
Reviews for Where Night Birds Call:
Thorne writes some of the most simple and beautiful folk songs you will hear. Where Night Birds Call is filled with stunning sketches of love and loss and small town life.
The Age, EG
Thorne is one member of the elite club of local singer/songwriters - think Holly Throsby, Clare Bowditch - creating sublime folk/pop.
The Good Weekend
The songs on Where Night Birds Call are close enough to touch. Thorne's near-whispered, lovelorn vignettes are startlingly and infinitely believable; spare and skeletal in terms of ideas and arrangements but beautifully lush and textured in their rendering of thematic, tonal and melodic detail. Weary, lovelorn ballads (The Upfield Line, Home Sized Town, Night Drive) are pitched against strikingly pared-back rock (The Movies, Five Years and the sublime self-sung harmonies of Shot in the Dark) with a rare, natural ease.
****, The Age
Thorne creates an oasis of musical beauty which is completely entrancing ... deceptively simple ... disarmingly sweet ... stunningly beautiful... The guitar tapestry woven by Thorne and Heath Cullen acoustics and muted electrics is a lesson in musical empathy. Where Night Birds Call is every bit as entrancing as its criminally ignored predecessor, The Bud.
The Canberra Times
One of Australia's finest soulful songwriters
Beat Magazine
...Lyrically, Thorne is unabashed in writing about carefully-observed and faithfully documented, or imagined, small-town subjects. This makes for captivating, charming, intensely humane, fragile songs, performed with sublime sensitivity by, especially, her collaborator, lead guitarist and backing vocalist, Heath Cullen but, no less, her bassist (and well-matched backing vocalist), Robyn Martin and empathic drummer, Jay McMahon. For those of us who've only just discovered this polished gem has been recording for a good ten years, the poverty of our ignorance is almost too much to bear. Thorne well understands the power, romance and magic that lies in what is simple, everyday and even mundane. That which is right under our nose, but which we can so rarely see, obscured, as it so often is, by the migraine-inducing glare of vacuous celebrity. Lucie, her songs & presentation are a tonic.
excerpt from Australian Stage live review, 19/04/08