Rhythms Review by Tony Hillier September 2011
Marce Howard & Rose Bygrave PEARL CD
Marcia Howard and Rose Bygrave, long-time soul mates and band mates in Shane Howard’s high-riding '80s band Goanna, have teamed up following successful careers as solo singer-songwriters. Pearl, the name of the act as well as the title of their debut album as a duo, features alternating compositions and lead vocals from the principals, with the acoustic guitarist-keyboard players backed by a selective and simpatico group of musicians that includes the renowned guitarist Steve Cooney, multi-instrumentalist Dave Steel and Marcia's brother Damian Howard. Both ladies are blessed with crystalline voices and perfect enunciation and impeccable harmony singing skills, which makes for optimum blending of their voices when they converge.
The more autobiographical songs on Pearl, an album engineered and produced in the duo's home studios at Queenscliff and Warrnambool, veer towards sentimentality, but there's a cluster of tracks at the heart of the set that is truly outstanding. The purple patch starts with Marce Howard's Latin-flavoured 'Everything Reminds Me', appropriately delivered by the composer in a wistful tone with muted trumpet and jazzy electric guitar creating optimum ambience. Bygrave's spirited singing on her blues-gospel potboiler 'Distant Child', with fiddle and dobro backing, is equally arresting. Their combined vocals on Howard's poetic 'Two Sisters Dreaming' are outstanding. Likewise in the sole cover, of Lesley Duncan’s 'Love Song', that closes the album, with stinging electric guitar entwined.
‘In January I had the pleasure of sitting in with and witnessing the wonderful talents of Rose Bygrave and Marcia Howard in their great new creation, Pearl. Its divine singing and harmony coupled with clever songwriting and a life- time's stagecraft. The audiences were enthralled and rightly so.’
Nick Charles- RHYTHMS Magazine August 2011
Burning it up - Irish Echo |
By TJ Cranley - December 2004 |
Few modern artists have bridged the musical divide between Ireland and Australia as seamlessly as Marcia Howard. Her acclaimed new album was recorded in Dublin and features friends such as Mary Black and Tim O'Brien. It may be the best work yet from this former star of Aussie rockers, Goanna.
This, Marcia Howard must accept, is the rest day. Yesterday there was her daughter’s 12th birthday bash to get up and going; tomorrow she’s on stage at another music festival on Australia’s east coast.
But today is better. There was only the little matter of driving to the festival, unloading the kit, doing whatever sound checks she could, caring for her two kids and a couple of their stray friends that happened by, and answering those increasingly-pesky phone calls from a daft but well-intentioned reporter asking if she’s found that promised time for a chat yet. Easy. The salad day
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Burning In The Rain |
If anyone can somehow unite the Anglo/Australian, Irish and Aboriginal clans, it will be the Howards.
Burning In The Rain, Marcia Howard's second solo CD, has an earthy sensibility which speaks from deep within the soft core of sensitive hearts. She with her brother Shane Howard, who's has recently released his superb Retrospect and Another Country CD's, have settled now in country Victoria, their land, linked with their Irish predecessors and with the indigenous everywhere. Marcia Howard has the feel about her of an Earth Mother, her brother the feel of a Folk Priest for Australians.
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Bringing it al back home- The Age |
By Martin Flanagan |
The first music Marcia Howard remembers is her mother singing her to sleep - cradle songs, lullabies. ``Beautiful," she says. Later her mother played the big pipe organ at the local church and she, her five brothers and sister sang. She says that's where she learnt to harmonise. ``It was the only way you could hear your own voice."
The Howards were known as the Von Trapp Family of western Victoria. They sang at the opening of BTV6 in Ballarat. They sang at Irish nights in the Shamrock Theatre in Koroit - Irish-American songs like When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Since getting to know Irish singer Mary Black, it has intrigued Marcia to learn that Irish-American music predominated in Black's home rather than traditional Irish music.
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Beat Magazine Melbourne - Review |
David Dawson, June 2004 |
When Shipwreck Coast singer Marcia Howard cut her second solo album long after a six-year sojourn with Goanna she enjoyed the luck of the Irish.Marcia was touring Ireland with Mary Black when Nashville bluegrass aces Tim O'Brien and Jeff White fronted in Dublin. Producer Steve Cooney enlisted the duo to play fiddle and mandolin and sing on a disc that also boasted Black and a brace of Irish musicians.The expatriate Australian also played guitar,bass percussion and didgeridoo as Howard returned to her ancestral roots in song.And its that beatific hybrid of folk,country and Irish music that makes this one of those joyous sleepers of the year. Howard,like the best writers, bares her soul on a disc whose therapeutic theme may or may not be recovery from divorce and white hot ashes of love.She exorcises faded love in the entree title track and provides shelter in spiritual healing of Stonewall. They segue into the Howard-Black collaboration on William Blake poem Poison Tree, reprised from compilation disc 'A Womans Heart - A Decade On'.
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Marcia Howard - Butterfly |
| Beat Magazine |
Marcia Howard's first solo release 'Butterfly' represented a long awaited solo debut from one of Australia's best-loved female voices. Renowned for her stunning vocal harmony work with her brother Shane Howard and Rose Bygrave in the legendary band Goanna, her singing and song writing developed further for the 1998 Goanna project 'Spirit Returns' (ABC/Universal) where Marcia displayed a passionate and heartfelt appreciation of social and political issues.
Marcia's song 'Sorry', for example is a heartfelt lament for the 'stolen' generations. (Amongst other luminaries, Stephen Cooney's wonderful production and musicianship, and Ireland's Liam O'Maonlai contributed to this recording). Her song 'Angel full of Grace' (Spirit Returns - Goanna & Best of sea Change - Various Artists, ABC/EMI) features twice on the highly acclaimed and much loved series Seachange.
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The Warrnambool Standard, Review |
Matt Neal |
FORMER Goanna member Marcia Howard wowed Port Fairy folk festival audiences with a set filled with tracks from her Celtic flavoured follow-up to Butterfly. Produced by legendary ex pat Australian Steve Cooney, the CD was recorded mostly in Ireland. The album is a diverse effort that somehow mixes Celtic sounds with Nashville tinges and Howard's Australian folk-pop song writing.
One of the showstoppers at Port Fairy was "Lonely For Love", a gorgeously simple-but-effective bluesy torch ballad, reminiscent of the sirens' song from the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou". There is a familiarity in the material that catches the ear first listen without sounding derivative. "Stonewall" touches on "Stand By Me", not just in its chord progression, but also in its theme of 'a shelter in a raging wind'.
The instrumental closing track "Caoineadh Cholmille" sounds like a traditional piece of Irish music history, despite being written in recent years. Elsewhere there is the gospelly "Angel Full Of Grace", the lush vocals of the Celtic "I Don't Mind" and the country skip along of "Like A Girl Again".
Lyrically Howard is as strong as ever and is not afraid to use other people's words, notably William Blake on "Poison Tree".
Blarney Bulletin - Review |
Kevin McCarthy, May edition 2004 |
Marcia Howard's second solo album Burning in the Rain is a treat. Produced in Ireland and featuring some of the best talent that country has to offer, this record signals Marcia's growing stature as an international performer and songwriter. The 12 tracks include Poison Tree (with Mary Black), Angel Full of Grace (featured in the Seachange series), Donovan's Catch the Wind, and Marcia's tribute to the Stolen Generations, Sorry. Produced by Steve Cooney, Burning in the Rain features Mary Black, Kevin Burke, Steve Cooney, Pat Crowley, Eamon de Barra, Maria Doyle-Kennedy, Laoise Kelly, Conor McKeon, Una Ni Chanainn, Triona Ni Dhomhnaill, Tim O'Brien, Odhran O Casaide, Bill Shanley and Jeff White. This is a superbly crafted record and a "must have" in any decent music collection.
