Miriam Jones
Album: Between Green And Gone
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.miriamjones.com

This is another of those deceptive records where there's more going on than the spacious, comparatively unadorned electric textures and simple, to-the-point yet obviously heartfelt lyric content might initially indicate. This may be Miriam's third or fourth, or even fifth, album release, but it's provided my first - and hopefully not my last - encounter with her music.

Her background is mobile: though she's a Vancouver native, Miriam actually spent part of her childhood in Papua New Guinea and part in Nashville, where she eventually returned to make 2008's Being There album, with acclaimed producer Charlie Peacock at the helm. The folk-pop s/s vibe of that offering was further developed on 2010's live album Fire-Lives, a couple of years or so after which Miriam teamed up with Fairground Attraction's Simon Edwards to make a tougher, arguably even rootsier follow up.

This follow up, Between Green And Gone, is an exciting yet concisely expressed collection of short-story situational statements in song that are delivered with a gritty confidence and self-assurance that's mirrored in the ballsy instrumental backdrops (the core rhythm section of Simon Edwards and Martyn Barker overlaid with selective yet vital augmentation from Mikey Rowe on keyboards and Calum MacColl on additional guitars). Pick of the songs for me are the opener Train; the cooler, delicate ballad Given All; the resigned climate of All Over; the plaintive Stay; and the more measured tread of the anguished Missed You. But the sinister emotional ambiguity of Unknown seems almost in a class of its own.

Although the time-honoured difficulties of love provide the bulk of their subject-matter, Miriam's songs are catchy, intelligently presented, and strongly voiced (this latter aspect is brought out particularly well in the disc's clean and well-focussed recording). Having supported Roddy Frame on his UK tour earlier this month, Miriam will be staying here in the UK to showcase the album properly on a brief headline tour of her own next February, which includes the official album launch gig in Oxford.

David Kidman