Whatever happened to Candie Payne?

There is a book I saw a couple of years ago, amongst those aimed at the market for Christmas gifts, with the title 'The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard' Nigel Williamson (2008).  I flicked through it in the shop and the only album that I can remember from it was one I already had - indeed it was, and remains, one of my favourite albums of 2007.  It is this...

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - Candie Payne (2007)

  

I have mentioned it before, including the particular part it played in the events of late summer 2007 in my little world, but I don't like it just for that reason.  I had owned it for a week or two before that and it was on almost continuous rotation in that time; on vinyl when at home and on CD when travelling.  I too cannot understand why it was not better known.

After this she spent much of 2008 touring with Mark Ronson on his 'Version' tour and then for a while the trail, at least as far as I was concerned, went cold.  Towards the summer of 2010 I got the LP out again and started to listen to it quite frequently and it prompted me to look in to the issue in more detail.  That resulted in me finding out about and purchasing the following album.
  

Bright Light Ballads - Howard Eliott Payne (2009)
  

To add that it was produced by Ethan Johns (think Laura Marling, Sir Tom Jones and others in 2010 alone) says a great deal, I think.  She sings backing and harmony vocals on many of the ten tracks.

To say that Ms. Payne comes from a musical family is an understatement.  While the alt-country of 'Bright Light Ballads' bears little, if any, resemblance, one of her brothers and the above-mentioned Howard Payne, was a member of Liverpool band The Stand.  Her other brother, Sean, was the drummer in very successful Liverpool band The Zutons.  Both of these bands have now called it a day.

Come the end of 2010 it became clear that at least one new act was rising from the ashes of these various projects - one called The Big House.
  

  

Her principal partner in crime in this new band is Paul Molloy, also formerly of The Zutons. There are two sides to this: one is that there is certainly no lack of talent and the other is that I doubt very much that it sounds much like any of the aforementioned projects.
  

The Big House is very much one of the acts that I would like to hear live in 2011. 

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More...

The album that I've listened to most in the last six weeks, and the one which I continue to do so without fail, is this one.

This is actually the cover of the single I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, which is also available on 7" vinyl, but the album has the same title and the cover illustration is in a very similar vein. This is the début album by Candie Payne and the UK indie label 'Deltasonic' has also had the great sense to release the album on vinyl with an illustrated inner sleeve.
What is more is that it is also frighteningly good, if rather different to that which might usually make the charts, and when she needs backing vocalists she calls on her brothers, including Sean who is the drummer with the Zutons, and also Abi Harding who is the saxophonist with the same. All are actually very good backing vocalists but neither this album or their contributions to it sound remotely like the Zutons own works.

The opening track, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, may sound rather like a James Bond theme tune that is just slightly too realistic and melancholy to be real and so, and therefore also in many other ways, this is the track that goes far towards defining the whole theme from the start. If an album can be wistful and sometimes nostalgic, but also both positive and realistic at the same time, then listening to the first side will probably seem too good to be true. The second side might actually, however, turn out to be the better one and that really is an achievement.
I have found three singles, all taken from the album, that are available on 7" vinyl; these are 'I wish I could have loved you more', 'Take me' and 'All I need to hear', which are tracks 1,3 and 5 respectively on the first side of the 12" LP.
For the dates of live performances see here.