READERS’ CHOICE PART 2

PLAYLIST
• Album: Marlinchen in the Snow by Charm of Finches on Spotify
• Album: Light Sleeper by Bess Atwell on YouTube

British indie artist Bess Atwell (David Pentecost photo)

Two musical acts whose profiles are surely growing caught the attention of contributors Debbie McGee and Chris Wong this year. Australian women’s duo Charm of Finches and Britain’s Bess Atwell both toured in 2024 behind their latest releases.

• Charm of Finches describe their sound as contemporary chamber folk. They started performing when they were children and released their debut album as teenagers in 2016. Their 2024 album, Marlinchen in the Snow, is their fourth and has a Canadian connection being produced in Nova Scotia. They told Behind the Music magazine that their name “is the real collective noun for a groups of little finch birds. We love collective nouns and wanted to choose one of them. Though enticing, Murder of Crows or Crash of Rhinos didn’t really suit us so well as Charm of Finches.”

• Bess Atwell may well see her third and latest album, Light Sleeper, be the breakthrough disc that changes the course of her career. Her successful tour included 47 shows in 10 countries.

Produced by The National’s Aaron Dressner, it received positive reviews including four stars from UK newspaper The Guardian. Reviewer Kitty Empire wrote: “Light Sleeper deals with all kinds of emotive situations, worked into poignant, dreamlike miniatures. Tapering off antidepressants and embracing the full force of life is an overarching theme: “to wake up and feel everything,” as Atwell sings on the title track.

The 7th Annual Readers’ Choice

One of Kurated’s aims is to share music with you. In turn, readers often mention new music, upcoming concerts, offer musical opinions and more. Once a year you’re invited to act as guest curators to highlight music that’s caught your attention during the last year in the annual Readers’ Choice series. Anything musical is welcomed whether its new, an old favourite, something self-composed and more. Thanks to all of you contributors for participating!

04 January 2025

Debbie McGee
St. John’s NFLD

Australia’s Charm of Finches take top honours from contributor Debbie McGee. “I knew they would be my Kurated readers’ choice for 2024, ” she writes.

Marlinchen in the Snow (album)
by Charm of Finches

When I heard Charm of Finches perform this year, I knew they would be my Kurated Readers’ Choice for 2024. This sister duo is from Australia, and I saw them on stage at The Writers at Woody Point book festival in August 2024.

The sisters, Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, have released four albums. They have toured extensively through the UK, Europe and Canada and are winners of the Australian Folk Music Awards Best Folk Album (2022). Their music has been nominated twice for the prestigious Australian Music Prize.

In February 2023 the sisters spent a month in rural Nova Scotia recording with acclaimed Canadian producer Daniel Ledwell. “Inspired by the frozen beauty of the landscape and their transient life on the road with their music”, the result was their fourth studio album Marlinchen In The Snow, which is the one I’m offering here.

About Debbie: Debbie McGee is a retired filmmaker living in St John’s Newfoundland.  Her book, Cautiously Pessimistic: love and death in the digital age will be published by Breakwater Books in the spring of 2025. Debbie’s work can be seen at debbiemcgee.ca

Chris Wong
Vancouver BC

Contributor Chris Wong introduces Bess Atwell’s Light Sleeper as his favourite album of the year. He writes: “The music, which you could call indie or alternative folk/rock if you’re into categorizing, dreamily resonates and engages.“

Bess Atwell: Light Sleeper (album)

If you stream music on Spotify, you likely know what Spotify Wrapped is. If you haven’t heard of it, I’ll briefly explain. Annually, Spotify releases to its millions of users some data on what they listened to on the streaming service in the previous year. The data is packaged with bright colours and sounds, and is tailor-made for sharing in social media. I’m not going to go deep on how Spotify Wrapped is a lame marketing campaign, or focus on recent investigative reporting that alleges the digital music, podcast, and video leviathan is populating playlists with music by “ghost artists” to reduce royalty payments to musicians. 

The bombshell allegations about Spotify are important, but it’s not the point of this article. Instead, I’m going back to Spotify Wrapped to share some stats:

• In 2024 (up until December) I played 5,441 songs on Spotify, and the number one played tune was Release Myself, by English singer/guitarist/songwriter Bess Atwell. Starting on May 25, the day after the release of Atwell’s Light Sleeper album, which includes Release Myself, I played the song 67 times. That put me in the top 0.005% of people worldwide who have listened to it on Spotify. 
• Out of the 2,375 artists I played on the platform, Atwell was also the top artist I listened to. Apparently, I played her music for 1,246 minutes. 
• Three songs from Light Sleeper were in my top five most played tunes. Four were in my top 10, and five were in my top 14. 

You get the point. I was, and I still am, completely enamoured with Light Sleeper. Why?

• It’s a beautiful album. The whole vibe is gorgeous but not in a syrupy way. The songs – all written by Atwell – feel authentic, fragile, and real. To my ears, those elements epitomize beauty. Plus Atwell’s voice is, in simple terms, exquisite. 
• The music, which you could call indie or alternative folk/rock if you’re into categorizing, dreamily resonates and engages. Aaron Dessner, who is in the National and who has produced and co-written with many prominent artists, produced and played on Light Sleeper at his Long Pond studio in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. Musicians who have performed with the National, Sufjan Stevens, Big Thief, Beirut, and others also performed on the album. Having an all-star band could have been a negative by imposing a sound on Atwell, but that didn’t happen. Her essence comes across clearly, indelibly. 
• I’m a light sleeper, so the album and song title spoke to me.
• While I enjoy the whole album, three songs – Release Myself, The Weeping, and Sylvester – are key. They have substantive themes. Release Myself is about Atwell’s panic disorder and her hard-won self-acceptance. The Weeping looks at parallels between Atwell’s sister, who has severe nonverbal autism, and the singer, who has also been diagnosed with autism. Sylvester examines inauthentic roles that people take on in families, and striving toward genuine connection. These aren’t obvious connotations; I only know about the songs’ meanings because of reading quotes from interviews with the 30-year-old. My point: it’s meaningful music. The antithesis of fluff. 

I think I learned about Atwell after Spotify suggested her music for me. That said, if I can wean myself from my Spotify addiction and take a stand against corporate practices that exploit artists, then I won’t be able to write a piece like this next year. That’s more than okay, because there are still ways to discover artists that aren’t algorithmically engineered (e.g. reading Kurated). In an ideal, algorithm-free world, Atwell would reach audiences on the strength of her artistry. In this world, regardless of how I found her, this light sleeper is deeply thankful for her affecting music. 

About Chris: Chris Wong is the author of Journeys to the Bandstand: Thirty Jazz Lives in Vancouver, published in February 2024.