Heidi Berry

In some ways, Heidi Berry’s run of albums for 4AD are particularly expressive of that label’s ethos, which was always more about unique song writing and artistry than its surface presentation of ethereality, its ‘goth-lite’ caricature. Case in point: Berry’s songs sit neatly and equally alongside the songwriters that 4AD label head Ivo covered in his This Mortal Coil project – Gene Clark, Roy Harper, Alex Chilton. Heidi Berry stripped away some of the ‘floatier’ layers of production that cosseted its predecessor, Love, and focused in on Berry’s melodic and lyrical poetics. There are incantations for strings (“Little Fox”), plangent ambient drift (“Ariel”) and deep country-folk cuts (“Dawn”) – she even proves herself a dab hand at a pop song capturing both the personal and the universal, on the single, “The Moon & The Sun”. All this, and a heartbreaking cover of Kate & Anna McGarrigle’s “Heart Like A Wheel” - Berry knew her stuff.