Sarah’s debut album ‘Song up in Her Head’ was an excellent album that showcased the varied talents of this young folk and roots singer/songwriter and multi instrumentalist, but there are few who could have anticipated just how good this second album is. 

Her approach is to take influences from all areas and fuse them together into one impressively cohesive album – it’s obvious she’s coming from a folk tradition, but she fuses it with modern material and a whole host of ideas.  It creates a sound similar to, although more acoustic and relaxed than label mates ‘The Duhks’, where stellar rootsy musicians and imagination are given free rein to create exciting music. 

The album is based around her own trio, but the album has a host of world class musicians joining her including Shawn Colvin, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Viktor Krauss, Dan Tyminski and Darrell Scott.

In addition to been a great musician (mandolin, banjo & guitar), her songwriting punches way above what you would expect from a 20yr old, ‘Annabelle Lee’ is a strong adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe poem, ‘Run Away’ has an Appalachian feel, and on ‘Here Nor There’ she shows she’s equally adept at the introspective singer/songwriter songs.  Add to these a couple of great covers, including Dylan’s ‘Ring them Bells’ and she really has every base covered, and the fact she does it with effortless vocals and real élan show that she’s going to be a real force on the contemporary Americana scene.

Track listing
1 High Atmosphere
2 I Don't Know
3 Sister
4 I Told The Man
5 Little Lamb
6 Poverty
7 My Love is Gone
8 Don't Forget Me
9 Funeral Singer
10 Poor Heart
11 Drug For This
12 Motherless Children

£12.99 released 16th May, 2011

review 04 April 2011