Maggie Reilly
Album: Heaven Sent
Label: Red Berry
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.maggiereilly.co.uk

Still best known to the wider world for her work with Mike Oldfield (Moonlight Shadow) and Hall & Oates (Family Man), Scottish singer songwriter Maggie Reilly also numbers the likes of George Harrison, Strangler's bassist Jean Jacques Burnel and Wombles/Katie Melua godhead Mike Batt among her collaborators.

For this latest release she has once again tapped her roots in the Celtic folk traditional for songs such as One Autumn Day and less obviously so on Fare Thee Well and Léanan Sídhe, which flirts with Enya territory. The sound is accomplished, beautifully played and reaches to the converted, but while she's in no mood to hide it there's more to Maggie Reilly than where she came from. Cold the Snow Clad Mountain raises the bar with its joyously yearning mood and the sorrowful If harnesses some telling musicianship (take a bow Duncan Chisholm on fiddle) and universal lyrics.

On the other hand, the workaday radio-friendly pop rock of Juliette doesn't serve the album so well, not when there's strident fiddle-laced Eurobeat like Stars At Night or the disco boom of Heaven Sent that do a far better job.

Still, Maggie Reilly's voice is stronger as ever, as is her steadfast refusal to be pigeon holed and confined by genre.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk