Rani fronted the excellent ‘Salamander Crossing’ in the 90s, and this is her second album with her band ‘Daisy Mayhem’, a group of three men, rather than a second female artist as the name suggests.
Describing the overall style of ‘Gambling Eden’ is almost impossible – it’s an acoustic disc, but is instrumentally rich; it contains a mixture of her own material, well chosen covers and traditional songs; and stylistically it covers a wide range of genres. While this description may read like it’s going to be a jarringly disjointed listen, this couldn’t be further from the truth – the sequencing of the tracks is perfect, the 12 songs flow really well and the disc has a confident swagger that gives the album a vibrant and fresh feel.
Rani has a smooth and fluid alto voice, versatile and strong enough to carry the changes in style with ease – she’s as convincing on the trad material as she is on the contemporary songs. She’s also an accomplished fiddler, and while there is plenty of fiddle on the album it’s really discreet and she has a lovely lightness to her playing, it’s never too showy and is always appropriate. Other instrumentation provided by the band and guests is uniformly excellent, a wide range of guitars, mandolin and brass are just some of the textures used throughout.
The highlights are many, but personal favourites are ‘Turtle Dove’ an infectious, upbeat trad song with a fantastic chorus, her own song ‘Eve’, and the cover of Dave Carter’s ‘Farewell to St Delores’, which is a beautiful way to close the album.
‘Gambling Eden’ is an intelligent and challenging disc, it has a wide variety of songs to offer, but it never takes itself too seriously and there’s a real sense of fun running through the disc. Those looking for something a little off the beaten track will find much too reward them here.

£12.99