Reviews of This Imaginary Woman CD

NME
8/10
Patrick Fitzgerald and Fern Smith
This Imaginary Woman (Ragoora Records)

As the soundtrack to an Edinburgh Festival show, this is not average NME fare. It's, gulp, 'musical theatre', yet stirs more emotions than most bands ever manage. With minimal music by Fitzgerald (of one-time critics' darlings Kitchens of Distinction), it deals with the death of actress Smith's mother from multiple sclerosis. So, backed by haunting piano, raging flamenco atmospherics and the occasional PJ Harvey-style blues squall, the focus rests almost on Smith's theatrically-projected blood-raw confessional that's spine-shivering and uncomfortably cathartic. Running emotionally from guilty relief to vituperative anger via the blackest self-deprecatory humour and leg-wobbling grief, if you've ever felt the bitter bite of loss, this can't fail to move you.

Jim Alexander

CD Sleeve by Eureka!

Independent on Sunday
SONGS FOR MY DYING MOTHER
*** This Imaginary Woman (Ragoora Records)

If the love song can be regarded in some small way as a secular requiem, then musician Patrick Fitzgerald and chanteuse Fern Smith make a brave stab at the form in This Imaginary Woman. Song cycles don't get more personal than this: its 15 tracks describe, in remorseless detail, the slow death of Smith's mother from multiple sclerosis. Fitzgerald, the recipient of acclaim with the Kitchens of Distinction and his Stephen Hero project, keeps his arrangements simple, turning the focus to Smith's wordy desolations. This Imaginary Woman is not quite an encounter with Diamanda Galas on a dark and windy night, but it's edging in that direction.

Louise Gray