Eddi's performing career began in the early 1980s when she travelled around Europe with a team of circus and performance artists. Not long thereafter, she moved to London and quickly became a sought after session vocalist. She toured as a background singer with the Eurhythmics, harmonizing beautifully with Annie Lennox, and subsequently joined with the post-punk outfit Gang of Four. It was the short-lived but warmly remembered group Fairground Attraction that brought her into the mainstream limelight and to the attention of a much wider audience. The band's single “Perfect” and parent album First of a Million Kisses were both British chart toppers.
On her three subsequent albums, she began to assimilate a variety of different musical styles and make them all her own. Her unerring instinct for fine material, whether self-penned, collaborative or a carefully chosen covers yielded several acclaimed solo projects, including Mirmama (1998 AFIM Award Winner for Best Pop Album) and Angels & Electricity, both of which have been issued in the US by Compass Records. On the heels of the US release of Angels & Electricity, Eddi launched a US tour with long time cohorts Boo Hewerdine (the album's co-producer) and Clive Gregson which included an appearance on World Cafe and sold out performances at some of folk music's top listening rooms.
Her 2001 effort Simple Soul offered her most stripped down and spare recording to date. Beautifully acoustic, many of eleven captivating, personal, light-hearted and heart-breaking songs were written or co-written by Eddi, confirming her true coming of age as a songwriter of considerable skill. Simple Soul also featured appearances by Adam Kirk (Joan Baez) on Dobro and electric guitar, Tim Harries (Steeleye Span) on bass guitar, Johnny Scott (music director for Van Morrison) on pedal steel and guitars, Teddy Borowiecki (music director for kd lang) on keyboard and accordion, Roy Dodd on drums/percussion and longtime collaborator Boo Hewerdine.
Simple Soul was the musical pathway that lead her to the ambitious Robert Burns project. Gaining confidence as a songwriter allowed her to take informed liberties with Burns’ original melodies (in some cases rewriting them entirely, or stripping them down to just one elemental fragment). The acoustic settings of Simple Soul also inspired her to seek out the finest in contemporary British and Scottish folk musicians who provide her with a glorious foundation throughout the record. The illustrious supporting cast includes Kate Rusby, BBC’s 2003 Musician of the Year John McCusker (fiddle, cittern), Phil Cunningham (accordion), Ian Carr (guitar), and old friend Boo Hewerdine, acting as producer, guitarist, and all-around foil.
With the Royal National Scottish Orchestra adding a burnished luster to the proceedings, Reader’s passionate, yearning vocals bring Burns’ timeless lyrics proudly into the present day. As familiar with the pub as he was with the university, few interpreters grant Burns the insouciance and candor his music radiates. Reader avoids that pitfall, painting a vibrant portrait of the young poet while secure in her own ample artistry. “As I read more and more about him,” she observes, “I get the sense that he was the same as the rest of us, a spokesman for the glorious in the ordinary, the sublime in the mundane.”
First debut in early 2003 in front of an ecstatic sold-out crowd at Glasgow’s massive Celtic Connections festival, these eleven songs represent Reader at her very peak – a richly vivid, insightful interpreter, a natural songwriter, and intoxicating vocalist.
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