Kirsty McGee & The Hobopop Collective
Album: Those Old Demons
Label: Hobopop
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.kirstymcgee.com/

For some years now, Kirsty's been high on my personal list of singers who've given me most pleasure: the proud possessor of one of the most charismatic voices on the scene, capable of so many shades of emotion and mood and yet always superbly poised and delicately understated. Apart from one sad hiatus at the start of the present decade where she suffered a terrible breakdown and crisis of confidence, Kirsty's output has been both consistent and stimulating - and remains absolutely unique.

Her special brand of music-making invariably embraces elements of folk, blues, jazz, lounge, vaudeville and Americana, and yet all too easily evades and defies any ready-made concept of genre - which is why the word hobopop was invented, in around 2007. At that time, Kirsty and her musical collaborator Mat Martin assembled The Hobopop Collective, an ensemble of like-minded and receptive musicians whose actual composition and membership could be as flexible and fluid as the gig demanded. Here, on the Collective's second record-outing (the first being the live set No. 5 back in 2010), the group comprises Marc Ribot (who's worked with both Tom Waits and Elvis Costello), James Steel, Biff Roxby , Barkley McKay, Clive Mellor and the tight rhythm section of Nick Blacka and Howard Jacobs. Kirsty's latest batch of new songs is festooned with sensitive, quirky, often gleeful and mischievous backdrops conjured out of a plethora of instrumental colours, with a deft and dextrous use of electric guitar tones alongside the assorted acoustica, amidst unashamedly oddball textures that might involve anything from banjo, uke, flute, clarinet and New Orleans-style carnivalesque brass to musical saw, waterphone and clattery, skittering junkyard percussion. In the latter aspect especially of course, the spirit of Tom Waits lurks aplenty, as does the aura of the beatnik and the air of late-night steamy bar-room, all being informed by a musical sensibility that's a cross between jazz-drenched blues and 30s/40s cabaret which is perfectly in tune with Kirsty's trademark gritty and wry sense of observational humour.

Moving effortlessly between softly ominous sensuality, carefree scat and smokily knowing come-on, Kirsty's vocal delivery is eminently assured yet capable of conveying acute vulnerability in her emotional predicament - Magnolia is a fine example of her technique, her pointed placing of sounds and syllables amidst a breathy melodic line, as is the cautious waltzer To The Dogs and the gently dynamic gospel-style a cappella intro to Pray. Often, as on the album's title song, Kirsty variously evokes comparisons with such class acts from the annals of jazz and blues as Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, even Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday - while she always renders her expressed compassion intensely personal and her songs equally intensely and obviously her own. A Plague's sinister, eerie opening Sprechstimme gives way to a biting critique and a veritable litany of curses, while Survival is a choice example of sultry, brooding twang. The fun mix of dirty shuffle and snappy insouciance take the opening pair of tracks (Running With The Blues and Salt) through a gamut of human experience in the space of barely three minutes, while the putdown vibe of Sweet Talk could even be described as rather joyfully enunciated. Closing number Your Main Man then brings a whispery, quaveringly plaintive air of deep confidentiality to the table, leaving Kirsty's tender reassurances ringing in our ears. Everywhere, though, Kirsty's limpid economy of expression is allied to a real-deal feel for the hybrid facets and congruences that together make up her distinctive performing style.

Those Old Demons proves a seriously compelling musical experience, an album whose myriad weaving, spellbinding, edgily shapeshifting nuances are destined to haunt you forever.

David Kidman