Laura Victoria
Album: Head Above Water
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.lauravictoriamusic.com

Northumbria-born Laura Victoria Hewison started her musical career with the youth outfit Folkestra North, appearing on their Fellside album before studying for her degree in folk and traditional music at Newcastle Uni. After this, a spell on the folk club circuit as cello-singer (marking her out from the crowd of guitar-toting singer-songwriters on the acoustic scene) led to an appearance at Sidmouth Folk Festival, soon after which she moved to London, dropped her surname and released an EP (Acting Up) which found her in the main following her own muse as a folk-pop singer-songwriter, a genre which is even more to the fore on Head Above Water, Laura's debut full-length CD release.

Laura's singing style, while brightly toned and forward-thrusting, can also be quite idiosyncratic, with distinct shades of Kate Bush (if not quite so waywardly warbly), and it serves her best on songs like Half-Hearted Love, the disc's catchy title number and the tough, punchy If Hell Freezes Over. Given the upfront, defiantly confident sound Laura obtains from her vocal chords, it may be thought a little surprising that her singing charms as much as it does, but I find it attention-grabbing too, and decidedly compulsory listening. Like her songs, in fact, the effect of her delivery is curiously empowering.

Laura's lyrics, though principally concerned with love and life, also often handle these topics from an unusual angle, and this aspect is reflected in the quirky musical settings Laura employs, involving in a key role her close friend, the talented and creative banjo and fiddle player Jo Cooper. There's occasional contributions from other friends too, including Sarah-Jane Miller (mandolin) and Ben Moss (guitar, fiddle and backing vocals), while mandola player Johnny B (of South London's No Frills Band) blends his voice with Laura's in duet mode on I'm At A Crossroads. Several of Laura's songs, like I'll Never Look Back, are built upon a bedrock of backporch-style banjo, while certain others (Half-Hearted Love) find Laura accompanying herself on what sounds like her own parlour upright piano. Laura's sweeping cello lines are both a powerful counterpoint to her singing voice and an atmospheric layering in its own right. In the past, Laura has had a reputation for what John Kirkpatrick has called "fearlessly adventurous" arrangements of traditional songs, but the only non-self-penned number on this album is Rock Salt And Nails (a traditional-sounding song by the recently-deceased Utah Phillips), the setting for which is interesting but relatively orthodox in nature.

There's much to admire on Laura's debut album, and each successive hearing and its concomitant extra degree of familiarity presents a more unified portrait of her individual, if at times slightly eccentric talent. It'll be interesting to hear where she goes next.

David Kidman