My Baby: Shamanaid

Dutch-Kiwi trio’s second blends Delta slide and gospel with a twist of ethnic spice.

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These Amsterdam-based mavericks recently opened up for Seasick Steve on his tour in the UK, and their second album deserves to further raise their profile.

Following up 2013’s My Baby Loves Voodoo!, Shamanaid adds an extra kick to the Delta-meets-folk formula that first got them noticed, courtesy of a stylish scattering of ethnic instrumentation, such as the Ali Farka Touré-style accompaniment of Panggajo.

The focal point, more than ever, is frontwoman Cato van Dyke, who is able to turn her tonsils to anything from a soft, hippyish warble on Seeing Red to a fearsome gospel soul belt on Uprising.

They are also unafraid to play fast and loose with the blues tradition and throw in startling snatches of what sound like samples and loops, but are in fact created live — giving the whole affair that extra element of unpredictability and purists-be-damned attitude./o:p

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.