Claire Sullivan
Album: Vintage Dreams
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.clairesullivan.co.uk/

What a truly wonderful voice Claire Sullivan has. It has a warm, soft quality yet is always strong and clear; making her songs a really pleasurable listening experience.

A fine example of this is on the very first track of her album, Vintage Words. The song is called 'New Seeds' and, like all the other songs on the album, is written by Claire Sullivan herself. It is a reflection on the end of a relationship and the sadness of parting but with a sense of hope and optimism about the unknown future. Voice and words fit perfectly together to give a real sense of loss and poignancy. Parting, in fact, is a recurrent theme on this album.

The second track 'Cloths of Heaven' is based on the W B Yeats poem of the same name. Like all of the songs, the lyrics a thoughtful; taking the original poem and adding a twist that I'm sure Yeats himself would have approved of.

My personal favourite is 'The Story of Her Name'; a deeply moving song about loss and death and about cherishing the memory of a loved one. There's an elegant simplicity about the song which, despite the subject matter, never threatens to slip into cloying sentimentality.

Just occasionally, the gentleness of Claire's voice seem slightly out of place. In Not The Lover For You, which warns a friend of the untrustworthiness of her latest lover, she sings 'He's a liar, a cheater, he's fooling you' with a sense if calm that robs an otherwise-strong song of some of its bite.

The final track, 'Smell the Roses' takes off in another direction altogether. Jon Wigg's fiddle adds a new energy and sparkle that shows that there is much more to Claire Sullivan than slow, thoughtful songs of parting.

This is a CD that's already spent a lot of time on my player and is likely to spend a lot more time there; amongst other reasons, for the pure delight of listening to Claire Sullivan's voice.

Tim Goodwin