Album review

Sarah MacDougall

Across The Atlantic

added: 13 Feb 2010 // release date: 25 Jan 2010 // label: Copperspine
reviewer: Andy Snipper

It sometimes feels as though all the best music is coming out of Canada these days and this album by Sarah MacDougall keeps that refrain going – it is simply delicious.

This would be put in the alt.country pigeon-hole but there is as much folk and even bluegrass in her sound and some of the tracks on this album stand comparison with some of the greats. She has a sensitive approach to her music with real melodies and a tone that speaks to the heart of the listener without sugarcoating or applying the saccharine as she sings about the joys and the hardships of life.

She manages to vary the tempo and the form from track to track, every song is different and on numbers like ‘Hundred Dollar Bills’ she manages to mix the jaunty sound of a euphonium and the melancholy of the viola before bouncing into ‘Biggest Mistake’, all up-tempo country with some superb guitar work. ‘Crow’s Lament’ sings of the solitary bird among the masses below and asks the question “Where do birds go when they die?”.
All through this album we are treated to songs about the solitary individual and the dichotomy of wanting human company and this is superbly demonstrated on ‘Ramblin’ as she sings “I’ve been rambling all my life so come on baby, ramble with me now ..... I’ve been rambling alone all my life” over a steel lap slide; you feel the emotional split between wanting to keep your life as it was but feeling the need for contact and warmth.
10 tracks and every one a cracker in its own way, this is Ms MacDougall’s debut official release and it sounds as though she will have a huge future ahead of her.

She is touring in April and May and the idea of seeing her in a venue like Camden’s Green Note Cafe or the Amberley Folk Club where she will be ‘intimate’ with the audience sounds like heaven to me.

www.sarahmacdougall.com www.myspace.com/sarahmacdougall

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