Latest CD releases reviewed

THE WAILIN' JENNYS
Firecracker Red House Records ****

It took me a long time to warm to this album. It wasn't that there was anything wrong; on the contrary, these three Canadian women are all wonderful singers - each is an accomplished if hardly original writer, and they all play a variety of instruments. But sometimes albums just elude you before suddenly falling into place. I think it was Nicky Mehta's heart-shaped Begin that began to melt my affections, closely followed by Annabelle Chvostek's Swallow and Ruth Moody's Glory Bound. All 13 tracks have plus or minus traces of folk and country influences, but it is the sound of the three women harmonising throughout that is Firecracker's outstanding and abiding quality. www.thewailinjennys.com Joe Breen

AMY MILLAN
Honey from the Tombs Arts & Crafts ****

Amy Millan is a leading light in the alternative music scene in her native Canada, where she fronts two bands, Stars and Broken Social Scene. Her debut solo album, recorded over three years in three different studios, shows Millan leaning in a more country direction than might have been expected. Not surprisingly, the patchy recording schedule means the album lacks a degree of cohesion. But Millan's voice, a combination of latenight vulnerable and beguiling strangeness, helps keep the show together. The bulk of the tracks have a country bent, albeit with a liberal dash of weirdness, and the themes rarely stray from love, loneliness and the bottle. Check out Skinny Boy, Baby I and He Brings Out the Whiskey in Me. www.amymillan.com  Joe Breen