Karen Tweed
Album: Essentially Invisible To The Eye
Label: May Monday Adventures
Tracks: 5
Website: www.karentweed.com

The first thing that gobsmacked me about "Essentially Invisible To The Eye" is that it's Karen Tweed's debut solo album. You get so used to hearing her accordion on other people's work or where she's one of the group, such as Swap and the Poozies, that you forget that she's never had an album out in her own name, until now. Maybe that's, in part, where the title comes in after being a featured musician on over thirty releases.

The gobsmacking continues when you realise that this is also a genuinely one woman show. It's not that she's surrounded herself with cohorts from other releases and put out an album in her name, because it's her turn, when it come to the playing it Karen Tweed and nothing but Karen Tweed. Bruce Molsky does twiddle the controls on the desk, but that's the other side of the glass.

"Essentially Invisable To The Eye" is an album of five sets, each with their own heart and soul, each highlighting why Karen is so much in demand as one of Europe's premium accordion players. She has such a feel for the instrument and seems to get textures and sounds out of that many players merely aspire to.

There's also the arrangements, how she pulls the sets together using a mix of self penned, traditional and contemporary pieces. The album it's self sounds like a European tour in its own right, calling on the playing styles of a number of different folk traditions, giving the album a feel that's as fresh as a North Sea breeze.

Each of the sets have been named after a tune within that carries the name of the set, "Mattie And Karine's" feature in "Karine" for example. It's also for me the strongest set on the album, the combination of tunes and arrangements give it an edge over sets, it seems to have more of a sense of journey to it.

At the end of "Essentially Invisible To The Eye", which comes all too soon, I realised that I'd spent over 40 minutes just listening to one woman and her accordion, not something I'd have believed I'd have done at the start, now that does prove what a talent Karen Tweed is.

Neil King