Tom Mank & Sera Smolen
Album: Swimming In The Dark
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.tommank.net

Oh my - yet another act that's apparently been around for absolutely years, producing a healthy run of CDs since 2000 (five of 'em!) without even making a fleeting appearance, let alone a dent, on my radar (who's been missing me out of their press mailouts then?… grr!). And yet theirs is a very distinctive sound-world that, once heard, is rarely forgotten or mistaken for someone else.

A little bit of necessary biog, then: Tom Mank is a self-taught east-coast (Ithaca, NY) singer-songwriter of some 20 years' standing, who's produced a large number of songs of an unbelievable depth and soulfulness, often heavily personal but never exclusive or precious; his soft singing voice speaks to your own very soul. Since 1994, Tom's teamed up with classically-trained cellist Sera Smolen, who brings an intense lyricality and passionate eloquence to everything she plays but also has a sublime singing voice that both sounds well with Tom's and takes on a gentle gospel flavour of its own when singing solo. Every track on this album could be judged a highlight - there's not a trace of a makeweight in the disc's 51-minute span. For the very best that the duo can offer, I might suggest you sample the pair of tracks (4 and 5) a little way into the album (Sergeant Oliver, a quite heartrending memoir of the Great War that has the ring of truth and history, and Sophie's Blues, a sanguine but poignant homily), then cut across to another pairing, that of track 7 (the inordinately beautiful, empowering Liberate The Sun) and track 8 (the dappled Watercolors, from whence derives the CD's title) and finally move on over to track 10, Running Like The Wind (an affectionate yet entirely unsentimental memory of Tom's dad); I guarantee you'll be hooked.

The musical trademark of the duo's approach is found in Sera's wondrous, silky cello lines soaring and dipping above Tom's subtly picked guitar rhythm that's allowed to ring and chime, both elements overlaid by their captivating shared vocals. Guest musicians are also brought in, but exceedingly sparingly, for occasional harmonica (Gait Klein Kromhof), violin/viola (Amy Merrill), piano (Kathy Ziegler), accordion (Tim Des Rosiers), guitar (Andrew Hardin) or mandolin (Curtis Teague), with vocal appearances from (among others) Anna Coogan (on Rest Of My Life, which she co-penned with Tom), Jeanie Burns (on co-write Green Apple), and Julie Last (on four tracks).

And as I've already hinted, Tom's songs are simply stunning. I'm completely won over by this very, very special disc.

David Kidman