“AbFab” Daughter Releases CD
My headline’s a little misleading. It isn’t the onscreen “AbFab” daughter, played by Julia Sawalha, who has just released an album. It’s the real-life daughter of the show’s star and creator, Jennifer Saunders, who’s the musical one. Her name is Ella Edmundson (pictured), and she’s also the daughter of Ade Edmondson. Ella was a typical child: at age 11, she got into goth music, dressed head to foot in black (with dyed black hair and black lipstick) and briefly joined the Church of Satan. Her debut album, “Hold Your Horses,” is on Monsoon records, a label set up by her father, and named in honor of her mother’s AbFab character, Edina Monsoon.
Produced by Kate Rusby collaborator Andy Seward, and backed by a band of leading folk musicians, the arrangements have the austere melodies, and acoustic colouring of English traditional music, but the songs are Edmondson’s own. Dark yet poppy musings on love, they are delivered in a trembling voice that is pure and soft.
