Kate Steele

Folk singer Kate Steele has a brave, proud voice, the kind you imagine ringing out over amber waves of grain as she packs her bags and heads out west. Like Hem's Sally Ellyson, there's a richness and clarity in Steele's instrument that's both undeniable and undeniably well-suited to its owner's chosen genre. Curve of the Earth, Steele's debut album, is a set of roots music as serious as She & Him's similarly vintage recent set is campy, twelve songs crackling into flame and billowing up into the prairie air.

http://www.cokemachineglow.com/record_review/3927/katesteele-curveoftheearth-2008 - Cokemachineglow.com

With a field as full as the female singer songwriter genre, it takes something really special to differentiate itself. Not only does it take a person of exceptional talent, but often it will even take these lucky few a couple of albums to really find their niche. Not so with Kate Steele on this, her debut album. First, Steele shows tremendous maturity in her lyrics. They are earnest and poignant and, more importantly, devoid of any pretentious wordplay that often mars other entries in this genre. These refreshingly honest lyrics are wrapped in Steele’s beautiful voice. Her control over this, her most valuable instrument, again belies this being her first full length album. Her arrangements tread a fine line between country and folk, throwing in dobro and mandolin from time to time as accents. The result is one of the finest first outings I have ever heard, and I already look forward to the next. - BeatRoute Magazine, Calgary

"Kate Steele has a truly beautiful voice and a real natural way with a song."
- Ron Sexsmith - N/A

Here is the charming debut of a folk/ alt country artist from Victoria- and proof that you don't need a record label or a big studio to make great music.

I attended Kate's CD release party in Victoria in September and heard Curve live before listening to the CD- save for the disarming stories on stage in between songs, it's the same experience. With Kate Steele, what you see (and hear) is what you get.

Recorded in the tiny studio at Gorddie's Music, Curve Of The Earth is about life. Steele's acoustic guitar is simple and fresh, her voice light and engaging, and Jonty Jervis Parker'ss violin playing is mournful and uplifting at the same time. The supporting cast, including producer Gord Pendleton, breathe life into Steele's music without hogging the attention. This is like Joni Mitchell crossed with my favorite Bruce Cockburn stuff.

Just another chick with a guitar? I suppose- but when you hear lines like "just because the first time that I told you that I love you/ we were listening to Dylan/ and I was talking to him"Â? you have to appreciate the way she looks around the corners.

- BC Musician Magazine

Following the best in the singer-songwriter tradition, Steele's music presents honest and playful, if somewhat melancholy, reflections on life. The track "Trouble," for example, empathises with an unnamed protagonist who is subject to constant scrutiny from the narrow-minded, lest he exhibit what they think are signs of a mental disorder. And "First to Lose" laments the silence that greets the evidence of domestic violence on a fellow student's face. But sandwiched between the two tracks in "Talking to Him," in which Steele wraps a voice as clear as the Saskatchewan sky around the zydeco styling of an accordion and an offbeat ska rhythm. The song, in which a woman informs a past lover that she was thinking of Bob Dylan when she said she loved him, snaps along with gentle authority.

http://www.mondaymag.com/articles/entry/new-star-on-the-horizon/arts/ - Monday Magazine, Victoria, BC