Folk Bands and Artists
Martha St. Arthur
If country music’s all about life inside America, Martha St. Arthur’s modern Westerns are all about life outside it. Raised in the badlands of England’s deep South in an identikit commuter town, her early influences were from Hollywood’s 1990s global sprawl: hedonistic party pop, paint-by-numbers rom-coms and Singstar symphonies. Now under the altogether more benign influence of Laura Marling, Brandi Carlile and Paul Simon, her punchy alt-county is preoccupied with politics, little England and the reality of life in the final years of liberal democracy. Contrary to lyrical indications, she’s actually quite a cheerful person
