David Rotheray
Album: Answer Ballads
Label: Navigator
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.davidrotheray.com

Now, here's a thing. The history of popular song is inhabited by people we'll never know whose identities, if they're known at all, rest only with the songwriters who named them. Dave Rotheray's album sits well with the one-time Beautiful South co-writer's Homespun project, in which he frequently creates characters through which he can view the world.

Here, he imagines what the world looks like for some of the people who we know through the songs that have previously been written about them. Thus, Answer Ballads opens with Mrs Jones' Song in which he imagines what the lady in Billy Paul's classic secret affair paean thinks about what went on. It's followed by Maggie's Song, in which we hear Maggie Mae's side of the story. Get the picture?

Rotheray has also done himself a huge favour by enlisting the help of guest vocalists - Eliza Carthy takes the lead in Maggie's Song - most tellingly in the fine form of Kathryn Williams who delivers possibly the stand out song on the album, the dry crackle of Roxanne's Song.

It's not exclusively female characters - John Smith does a fine job with Billy-Joe's Song (from Don't Take Your Love To Town) and Alasdair Roberts brings considerable presence to Dino's Song (from The Boys Are Back In Town), but Rotheray seems most confortable imagining how the ladies felt. The soul stirring Bobby's Song (Me & Bobby McGee) allows Naomi Bedford to really let go; while the closing Jolene's Song finds Julie Murphy doing the opposite and contributing a perfectly-judged missive from the less-is-more school of singing.

Answer Ballads won't feature in many records of the year lists, but it provides a diverting, compelling and frequently engaging missive from one of contemporary music's more idiosyncratic songwriters and as well as a fine collection of vocal talent

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk