There are many things that can attract an eye to a new album, and I do mean eye rather than ear, that all too often the first prompt. Of course, there are albums that serenade their presence first via radio play, or via the artist in a live setting, but most of us get our pointers to new artists from what we read. (Yes, in pages like this.)
Sometimes it is the presence of an associated cast and sometimes an intriguing back story that entice. This album by the new, at least to me, Lindsay Strachan has a bit of both. Her producer, guitarist and background singer is Kris Drever, and that’s a pull, yes? Likewise, the name of John McCusker, also in the credits, on fiddle and accordion. Add in her journey towards this release, starting relatively late to songcraft in her late 30’s, followed by attendance at one of those fancy looking songwriting retreats, whereby the great and the gifted are on hand to coax and cajole out any talent. As in yeah, right, but here’s some proof of purpose.
Floodgates opened by that experience, and the supportive words of mentors like Kathryn Williams and Boo Hewerdine, gave Strachan the confidence to proceed, together, helpfully, with a grant from Creative Scotland. Her 45th birthday was the catalyst to this album of songs, each first released as a single or, as they used to be known, a 45. That’s the tale, but is it any good?
Well, opening track, ‘Azalea’ would suggest so. With a mood more Laurel Canyon than Laurieston, Strachan has a voice that steers somewhere between Joanie B. and Joni M. Generally skirting the right side of shrill, it is just the job for this languid guitar strummed ode to maybe more than just the flower. John McDonald’s double bass slips and slides delicately as a fiddle and a saw, both Cameron Henderson, add their bowed textures, granting it with mild melancholia.
‘I Could Die (In Your Arms)’ offers a flavour of Nick Drake to the melody, abetted again by the bass and guitar scaffold, This time it is Dylan Cairns on fiddle duty, his additions impeccably Caledonian, within a song that essentially isn’t. A song of rashly discarded love, it is followed by the choppy instructional of ‘Love Is’, Strachan intoning her accumulated knowledge; it would be a tad twee without the sterling arrangement.
If ‘Please Give My Love Back’ suggests love and its myriad pursuits, and losses, are the prime inspirations for this singer-songwriter, I guess she wouldn’t be alone there. Once more the arrangement decorates the tune with more than just the notes written, and it is here that McCusker’s fiddle first appears, along with accordion. And if this all smacks too much of love for your hardened heart, take pleasure in the fact that, whilst it is a further love song that follows, it is to the Merlot grape. Ish, as in not really, but it is still a country lament that sticks. My favourite of the album, for more reasons than the association, it is as if Strachan is stopping quite so hard to project, her voice benefitting from a degree of laxity perhaps absent elsewhere.
McDonald’s bass imparts a vibrant thrum to ‘Volcano’, where eerie bvs add a siren like quality, entirely in step with the lyric “I hope you’re dreaming of me!” A second killer song, the album feels it has jumped up a notch here. Am I hearing a distant flavour of Sade Adu in ‘All Ends Will Come?’ Irrespective, the disguise of fiddle and acoustic guitar strings render it a lingering memory, then perhaps strengthened by Henderson’s fiddle break in the middle eight.
‘The Lovers Of St Kilda’ is a gentle sway, a little too gentle, but does give the opportunity to appreciate Drever’s guitar work, and more of McDonald’s bass. Given there are more than one St Kilda in the world, musically it feels it isn’t on the rocky Atlantic outcrop that it is set, even if the words suggest the contrary. Similarly sentimental, a little, is ‘Afraid To Be Loved’, which creeps a little too far into saccharine. ‘Blind’ is much better, buoyed by the slow swell of McCusker’s accordion, and then by his fiddle, a waltz of wistful realisation. Back on track.
A maritime shiver swaggers through ‘We Stare at the Sea’, and it is again McCusker’s accordion that is placed centrally, a reassuring warmth. The ‘we should start a fire’ refrain is naggingly familiar, giving a fillip to remember it by. It would have been a terrific place to end the album, but we get one more, ‘The Drunken Bellringer’. This marries a tragic, or is it faux-tragic, narrative to a tune that smacks of, sorry, happy-clappy in the convent, meaning no offence to anyone enamoured of either. It’s harsh, I know, but I’d have left it at the innumerate‘s dozen.
Having said all that, bar this closer, and the earlier couple that stray that similar direction, this is really a very decent record and certainly very good indeed as a formal debut. Strachan can write and can sing, each of these truths further progressed by her choice of accompanists and by the production of Kris Drever.
Seuras Og
Artist’s website: www.waveoftheflood.com
‘Volcano’ – official video:
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