Roseanna Ball
Album: Geography
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.roseannaball.com

Roseanna Ball is a singer-songwriter based in North Devon, who's been busy over the past half-dozen years with a number of projects, mostly involving the collaborative name Roholio, which also over that time became the name of a duo with Tim Pointer and then a more fluid group incorporating several more musician friends. Roseanna released four ostensibly solo albums during that time, which all to some extent involved other Roholio members. But now she's departed from the Roholio brand name and released album number five, which is a genuinely solo record.

It's a direct, accessible, honest-to-goodness effort on which Roseanne plays guitar, mandolin and banjo and sings a load of supporting harmonies, to bring to life a healthy batch of ten new self-penned songs. A chief hallmark of her writing is a strikingly natural lyricality and accessibility of idiom, which can clearly be attributed to the company she keeps - i.e. supporting the likes of Boo Hewerdine - and her admitted influences and inspirations. Key among the latter is Seth Lakeman, whose tremendous personal energy has obviously proved so infectious that Roseanna plays the mandolin like a demon possessed on this album's uptempo numbers.

The stylistic versatility in Roseanna's writing mirrors her musical prowess, and in that respect the album tends to fall into two distinct stools, whereby gutsy "meaty mandolin" playing alternates with more graceful, appealingly intricate riff-based guitar picking. The freewheeling mando action is decisively to the forefront on the catchy, poppy opener Mexican Girl; the Megson-like pride-in-our-heritage industrial reminiscence The Line; and the local-legend-retold East Of The Water; but there's a danger that all that display of energy can seem relentless (and a little tiresome) if used as a by-numbers "call-on" backdrop, as Swings And Roundabouts and Barefoot And Kissing seem to hint. The guitar-accompanied songs, though generally less animated, tend on balance to be more satisfying: the disc's title number, which tumbles its playful lyric out to a sprightly jig rhythm, is a special delight, as is the genially ruminative Widemouth Bay, while concerns of romance are more the focus for the comforting I'll Stay and the wistful, wishful closer With You.

Roseanna's learnt her craft, for sure, and wears her accomplishment well. Having said that, I do still detect the occasional whiff of auto-pilot in some of Roseanna's gestures (both lyric-wise and music-wise), but in the end her appealing manner and simply expressed honest observations should, all things being equal, easily win us over.

David Kidman