Stay Right Here - Allison Russell
One of the greatest influences on Uncle Stylus is the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. In his calendar book "Children of the Days", he writes that dolphins, penguins, buffaloes, ostriches, koalas, butterflies, swans, flamingos albatrosses and many breeds of fish and other animals "have homosexual relations, female to female, male to male, for an encounter or a lifetime." He adds that "until this day", that is, May 16th, in "1990, homosexuality featured on the World Health Organisation's list of mental illnesses." (Eduardo Galeano, translated Mark Fried, Nation Books, 2013).
Allison Russell self identifies as "queer" and has said "I've been in love with women and I’ve been in love with men and I’ve been in love with trans people and I’ve been in love with non-binary people. .....one could assume that I’m straight, but I am not and especially in this time of increased polarization and bigotry, it is really important that people understand that nothing is black and white...." (The Bluegrass Situation interview).
I mentioned that her excellent latest album "The Returner" is funkier than her first, so we sign off with a more typically funkadelic number (as opposed to last post's wonderful "Requiem") that also features a string section, an atypical quartet featuring two cellos and two violins. The strings are a recurring musical theme on the album, and here feature a 40 second dynamic if chunky string quartet solo which sets you wondering what Tchaikovsky might have got up to were he alive today. Musically or otherwise.
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