Claudia Barton and Ian Williams inhabit a familiar London dream-world of charity shop glamour, bedsit bohemia and adored icons including Gallic chanteuses, Weimar ice divas, noir film scores and femme fatales, soiled with Soho seediness.
Williams’ melodramatic, semi-classical, piano-led arrangements frame Barton’s breathily versatile voice in these arch tales of romantic doom: The Tindersticks, Jack, even Saint Etienne have been here before, but Gamine’s eccentric, underground self-belief leaves them sounding like no one else.
Advertisement