SHEILA MAC DONALD – Tangle Of Trees (own label)

TangleOfTreesTangle Of Trees is the third album by New England singer-songwriter Sheila MacDonald and, I suspect, the first to be made generally available in Europe.

The album is produced by Raymond Gonzalez, who also provides most of the supporting instrumentation, although the violin of Emerald Rae is a distinctive part of the sound. I have to say that I took some time to get into it. The opener, ‘Butterfly’, is such a well-used metaphor but it ends with a beautiful instrumental passage that saves it for me. The second track, ‘Orphan Song’, is inspired by a Canadian TV series, Emily Of The New Moon, which I haven’t seen. It comes from the first of series of novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne Of Green Gables, and armed with that information, Sheila’s naïve reportage style makes sense. Track three is Andrew Calhoun’s ‘Peach Song’ and I only know Andrew as a fine interpreter of traditional songs but eventually we reach what feels like the real Sheila Mac Donald.

‘Halfway Home’ is a memory of country childhood, a gentle song made out of almost nothing and it’s followed by ‘Joe The Mechanic’, a quirky piece of observation blessed with some “dreadful” rhymes. It has the same direct style as ‘Orphan Song’ and is built on a series of incidents that only a real songwriter would put together.

Tangle Of Trees is a very pretty album but songs like ‘Pigeon Man’ release their truth gradually and it’s easy to miss a key point as the music drifts by. That said, I wouldn’t want Sheila to be more obvious.

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: https://www.facebook.com/sheila.macdonald.7

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