After 6 years of playing and touring with an innovative old-time string band comes this wonderful debut album from US singer/songwriter Martha Scanlan.
Overall, this is a reserved and acoustic affair, but the quality of the images painted by the lyrics and instrumentation makes this a truly memorable album and it’s obvious she’s travelled across the American West as the landscape is carved through the heart of every track.
In both the songs she writes and the music on show here she evokes the open spaces and classic imagery of the American West, and the whole album has an authentic, tin-roofed, dust road feel.
Produced by Dirk Powell, he brings his talent across a variety of instruments to the disc and adds depth to Martha’s acoustic guitar work.
The eleven tracks form a real whole, and as a sequence the song-cycle has a powerful impact, with the standout tracks being ‘The West Was Burning’. ‘Went to See the Gypsy’ and ‘Isabella’.
This is a fine album full of real quality, and a collection of songs with a tangible sense of time and place.

Track listing
1 The West Was Burning
2 Get Right Church
3 Went to See the Gypsy
4 Seeds of the Pine
5 I Don't Even Have to Ask
6 Call Me Shorty
7 Walkin'
8 Up on the Divide
9 Set Me Up High
10 Isabella
11 Ten Thousand Charms (aka Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing)

£13.49