Sunday Night Sounds: Kris Delmhorst

I saw Kris Delmhorst perform in London at the start of 2003 - before the invasion of Iraq, politics fans! She was on the same bill as Peter Mulvey and Jeffrey Foucault, both of whom are excellent musicians in their own right. They were performing as the Redbird collective (which also includes David Goodrich) but I’d never even heard of Kris before that night.

In the end, her presence gave the gig a balance that it might have lacked otherwise. Where Jeffrey Foucault was charmingly twisted, and Peter Mulvey was offensively talented, Kris Delmhorst was just flat-out wonderful. Each of the three were fantastic, but in very different ways. Like the other two, Kris is a storyteller rather than an entertainer, but her delivery was more natural, her melodies more hummable, her lyrics more accessible.

You should probably buy one of her albums (I’d recommend Five Stories or Songs for a Hurricane) but in case you don’t, here she is in 2006 performing one of my favourite tracks, “Hummingbird”.  See?  I can be sensitive.