Where There’s Smoke, there’s Smoke Fairies . . .
by M. Alberto Rivera
From Sussex, England, emerge the Smoke Fairies, a musical duo, who deliver their own blend of folky-blues with some of the most arrestingly beautiful, and startling, haunted vocals heard in recent memory.
Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies have known each other since they were eleven, started playing and writing music together when they were twelve, and together have embarked on this musical odessey which so far has produced several critically acclaimed releases, starting with2010’s “Through Low Light and Trees.”
The music would be easily categorized as British folk, but that’s too easy. On “Summer Fades” there’s distance and regret in the voices as they sing , “Can You hold me like you held someone/You should never have let go?” No amount of time will ever set this right, and they understand the loss completely.
“Morning Blues” approached and attacked differently could be something we’ve already heard a million times before. From Ma Rainey, to Zeppelin’s overloaded reinterpretations and everything in between. But here’s it’s a lullaby. Tender and poignant, tired and hopeful, it’s sung in a whisper and meant for an audience of one.
“Strange Moon Rising” and “Hotel Room” are the songs that most resemble the more commercial strains of indie rock people are fond of fussing over these days.
Blamire and Davies spent time living in New Orleans, and then later in Vancouver. Both cite their time abroad as formative. Says Katherine. “But a lot of our songs came from that time. You have to let the mayhem out somehow.”
Jack White of The White Stripes, Raconteurs, and Dead Weather took notice of one of their self-released singles and offered to produce a track for his Third Man label at his Nashville studio. Recorded with Jack Lawrence on bass, 
White on drums, and then on the flipside providing the guitar solo on ‘River Song’, ‘Gastown’/ ‘River Song’ was released in December 2009.
One of the firs things you’ll notice is the tension the Blamire and Davies quietly build with their austere instrumentation, and the tapestry the weave around it with their voices.
The tension isn’t built on anger or overblown emotion but is more carefully spun like a spiders web, fragile, and impossibly strong at the same time. Strings glisten as if shaking so much morning dew from from leaves with a slight rustle. This understanding that passes between the two of them, unspoken, and effortless, is what the rest of us are left to make sense of. It’s this internal communication with a gesture, or a glance that fills the quiet spaces in the songs with tension. People can’t bear quiet. It makes us feel as though there’s something wrong. But here, in the soft, lightly tread moments of the Smoke Fairies finest musical moments, is a generous awareness, each of the other, in ways only two performers who’ve played countless shows together can make sense of.
2012 saw the band release Blood Speaks, their second full length release. It finds them melancholy and moody once again, but with a more developed production. “Let me Know” is a straight ahead mid-tempo indie rock number, where they blend their voices, but feels safe for radio right off the bat. “My destruction is mine to own” one of them sings cool and off handedly, owning their misfortune. Most of the songs on the album are accompanied by a band and seem more readily accessible. The band is a cohesive unit, and Blamire and Davies’ have stepped away from naturally odd and idiosyncratic arrangements which peppered their earlier works.
These songs ruminate on loss of various stripes, “Something dies when you fall in love/ And something lives when you’ve had enough of driving over the ice,” they sing on “Take Me Down When You Go.”
Everything is brighter, fuller, louder, but the sunlight still as cold and distant as the last love gone wrong. it’s a safe bet the future doesn’t hold any “Walking on Sunshine” variety pop from these two any time soon. No Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire seem much more content to allow their art to speak for them and listeners will simply have to make of it what they will. Witchy and beguiling, quietly quirky, and keenly insightful, Smoke Fairies relay their stories and with a subdued approach, leaving us to try and understand it all.