Wit, liveliness and crackling musical ideas, jumping between global genres with relish–Kirsty MacColl’s third album, Electric Landlady, has all of them. It also has quite the title, as her friend and occasional songwriting partner Johnny Marr writes over e-mail. “We spent a lot of time together [then] hanging out, listening to records late at night and then making our own records during marathon recording sessions. I lived in her flat in Shepherds Bush which is how we came up with ’Electric Landlady’”.
Travelling the world with her husband, producer Steve Lillywhite, had given her exposure to big bands like the Rolling Stones and Talking Heads, with whom she gladly sang backing vocals. But her friends and voracious appetite for new music is what drove her creativity. Electric Landlady also saw the love of Cuban and Latin American rhythms in her life, which had been fired in her childhood by her brother's record collection, beginning to bud and bloom in her work. World- renowned artists like drummer José Mangual Jr, trumpeter Angel Hernandez, timbalero Mark Quinones and bassist Sal Cuevas joined her band, enhancing and enriching her glorious songs.
Many collaborations light up this LP. The defiant country swing of AllI Ever Wanted was a result of a writing partnership by post, exchanging tapes with American musician Marshall Crenshaw. He Never Mentioned Love, written with The Pogues’ Jem Finer, is a more mature, wry take on Kirsty’s earlier girl group-flavoured pop. The Hardest Word, written with her older brother, Hamish, is also about their late father, the renowned folk singer Ewan, with whom she had a tough relationship.