Night Visiting Songs

This is the first appearance on vinyl for Charlotte Greig's long out of print debut album, Night Visiting Songs. Twenty five years after its initial release, it still sounds like nothing you've heard before. Though, if you're looking for reference points, you could try imagining English folk legend Anne Briggs armed with Nico's harmonium and the Young Marble Giants ancient beatbox. The album was recorded entirely solo in her bedroom on an analogue four track cassette recorder. She backed herself on harmonium and dulcimer, plus an idiosyncratically programmed Dr Rhythm drum machine. It’s a mix of traditional and self-written songs, but so much of a piece that it’s not always easy to tell which is which.

Originally released as a very limited private press CD, it nevertheless gained a wide range of admirers, including musicians from James Yorkston to Julian Cope, tastemakers from Stewart Lee to Joe Boyd. One song appeared on Topic’s survey of the finest female folksingers, A Woman’s Heart. Radio 6’s Gideon Coe has regularly played tracks from the album. Charlotte Greig was also a writer and journalist, author of the seminal study of girl groups, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, before devoting herself to music in her thirties, inspired by the examples of Lal Waterson and Shirley Collins. She recorded six albums in all, which will be reissued in order. She died in 2014.