Gifts From the Darkness
by Tom Nelligan
As anyone who has ever heard her sing can testify, Christine Collister is a woman with a stunning voice. Whether crying out in loneliness or pouring out hope, she sings with a rare richness and emotion, putting more feeling in a single line than most singers capture in a whole album.
Had she begun her career a few decades earlier, she might have been one of those smokey-voiced cabaret singers that Humphrey Bogart would fall for in old movies. Instead, as one who found her voice in a more modern era, she started singing soul-searching contemporary acoustic music, folk-rock, and an English twist on the blues. She was the female voice in Richard Thompson's powerful touring band of the late 1980s, and then half of one of England's most memorable vocal duos with singer/songwriter/guitarist Clive Gregson. Now well established in a solo career, she continues to develop her craft as one of Britain's best singers and as a distinctive interpreter of a diverse catalog of songs.
The latest Collister album, The Dark Gift of Time features richly layered songs that develop the theme of hope coming out of darkness. "I can think of darkness as a gift. People are afraid of darkness, going into depths of things, the unknowns, our deeper emotions, the sadness, but if you do go into it and through it and come out the other side, it does give you a gift. At least that's my feeling."
This is an excerpt from Dirty Linen #78
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© 1998 Dirty Linen, Ltd., Baltimore MD
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