This emotional release by Welsh singer-songwriter Catherine Anne Davis, her first since 2016’s Confessions Of A Romance Novelist, brings piano-based songs with echoes of Tori Amos mixed with soaring guitar indie pop intensity. It’s an album that was intended to come out in March last year, and its undulations between the more intimate keyboard and soft strings to louder more 80s ballad indie pop are quite striking. The tone seems to be set at first with the gently beautiful Moon Rise, with a piano sequence reprise mid-album in All Shall Be Well, and then closing track Moon (An End) but these are by far the softer interludes. Almost as a musical commentary of changeable emotions from grief to relationship ups and downs, volume and band dynamics swell and fall with great contrast throughout, turning up high on tracks such as The Exchange, with guest James Dean Bradfield from Manic Street Preachers, or the electro pop banger Show Your Face, or with the title track which is classic synth 80s indie.
Gradually though, the balance of sounds shift. In All Farewells Should Be Sudden, we hear church bells heralding, of all things, some more like a pop power ballad where arguably her vocal throatiness at the end of each line can a little bit cliched and grating. But there’s no denying the power of the emotions and strength of the songwriting. The more intimate, piano and string numbers begin balance out with the indie pop, coming together on Unravel, and taking over on Paris, 5AM and With the Boys. But perhaps her best tracks are of an almost different ilk altogether. On The Heart is a Lonesome Hunter she could almost be PJ Harvey, while My Confessor builds into extraordinary intensity. One of the most contrasting albums of the year so far. Out on KScope / Snapper Music.
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