From Discus Music, the album Ice & Bone (DISCUS79CD) has been created by Jan Todd and Terry Todd, calling themselves frostlake. Jan Todd is a contributor to the Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere, Martin Archer’s very outgoing big band project which has always been warmly welcomed in these pages. Jan – who on this album plays most of the instruments, sings, harmonises, and wrote most of the material – aims by contrast for an intimate and very personal sound with her frostlake project, and her poetic allusive lyrics contain images of trees, ghosts, water, and fire, as she processes her memories in diary style. There are fleeting traces of whimsical psychedelia and even remote traces of folk music in here somewhere, but it’s mostly Jan Todd’s own very distinctive musical personality on offer. The combination of many unusual instruments produces pleasing effects, and she is particularly good at structuring her vocal harmonies for plangent results. I like it best when she reins in her penchant for an over-sweetened melody, and ‘Walking On Bones’ is a good example of “less is more”, coming close to delivering on her professed themes of darkness, dreams, the worldly and the unwordly. However, much of this is too close to easy-listening for me, a kind of poppier Cocteau Twins mixed with cocktail-lounge jazz chords. From 13th March 2019.
