ROOTS

Latest releases reviewed

KIERAN GOSS
Blue Sky Sunrise EMI
***

Listening to Kieran Goss's first studio album for five years, I was struck by how he had cultivated a sound not unlike Rodney Crowell's. Then, on checking out Goss's website, there was a good reason for this: Crowell co-produced the album! However, this is something of a curate's egg - good in spots, but ultimately neither convincing as an adult pop album, a country crossover album nor a singer-songwriter album. The good bits are many, particularly a wonderfully sensitive duet with Kimmie Rhones on the story-song Why Should I Be Lonely, and the quiet intimacy of Nothing's Changed Again; but against that the clumsy anti-clerical I Don't Need Your Love and the cliched Gotta Get to You are obvious weaknesses on what is a relatively short album, even with a shoes-off closing reprise of the opening soft-pop title track. www.kierangoss.com
Joe Breen

ERIN MCKEOWN
We Will Become Like Birds EMI
***

You just know that Erin McKeown was in the top stream in school and that she never had to raise an eyelid to get there. She is bright, articulate, talented and creative. So why don't I like her third album more? The answer lies in the detached tone of her voice, the less than gripping nature of some of her material and the half-realised production values. Her drummer is particularly irritating, laying fussy obtrusive patterns over gentle songs. She is at her best when her sidekicks turn the invention down and she can get on with telling us her stories, such as on Float or Delicate December, a torch-like duet with Peter Mulvey, or when she chooses to turn it up, as on the ringing new wave pop of White City. The common theme is birds, but this time too often she is away with them. www.erinmckeown.com
Joe Breen

ALISON BROWN 
Stolen Moments Compass Records
****

It's been five years since Alison Brown hit the studio with her five-string bluegrass banjo in tow. In the past, she's mined entire territories single-handedly, fusing bluegrass with jazz, making a much-neglected instrument all her own. Stolen Moments is bursting with that trademark Brown inventiveness: an unquenchable musical curiosity. This is cerebral music that manages to insinuate itself past the pelvis and deep into the hip, knee and ankle joints. From the quantum rhythmic leaps of The Magnificent Seven to the final, perfect curlicue, Musette for a Palindrome, Brown's banjo makes whoopee with a select cast including Seamus Egan and Stuart Duncan. Guest vocals are an entirely new departure, and soar skywards on a glorious newgrass reading of Paul Simon's Homeward Bound. Elsewhere, though, the songs soften Brown's focus unnecessarily. www.alisonbrown.net
Siobhán Long