Salwa Azar
Album: Black Feather Wooden Chair
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.salwasmusic.com

This is another of those infuriating instances when I've been totally unable to find out anything about the artist whose CD I'm reviewing. There's nothing biographical on Salwa's own website, which contains only the statement: "I have always sung. I have always written. Now you are part of my journey, that beautiful moment when others listen". Her Facebook page gives her hometown as "London, UK". There's no press release. Search engines yield nothing informative either. OK, the background's not crucial, and the music should speak for itself - which to a large extent it does. And OK, at least the booklet for Salwa's debut album does provide proper personnel credits and acknowledgements. Which is more that some releases do… So I won't be too churlish.

Suffice to say first, that it's a really interesting disc, one that catches the senses at once and doesn't let go for its whole length. And it's evident that Salwa's a true individual, with a distinctive outlook and expressive method that neither seems to reference any other songwriter nor sound like any other artist. Her act is hard to classify too. I've been more than sufficiently intrigued by Salwa's chameleon-like musical personality, and can tentatively just possibly compare her with Kirsty McGee, and then only really in terms of a common soft-spoken sensitivity and understated versatility. Salwa's assured and lyrical ukulele playing forms a common backdrop, with limpid and inventive ancillary textures provided by cello, double bass and gentle drumming (Matt Hill), with occasional use of lyre harp, slide guitar, trumpet, glockenspiel and shruti. Salwa's responsible for all lyrics and music on the album, and she sings with the greatest confidence and conviction, generally in a quite gorgeous and deliberately enunciated tone (you can hear every word), with the odd (surprising) ululatory outburst along the way (the close of Fighter).

Styling is mostly indie-s/s-folk with dashes of country and jazz (the lovely, homely closing track's even unprepossessingly titled Untitled Folk Song!). Each playthrough both reveals fresh delights and changes one's preferences, but I can maybe draw your attention to these tracks as highlights: the strange, swirling textures of Poseidon Sea, the floaty gait of White Horse, the pensive Eucalyptus And Pine, the deft bossanova of Table Top Love, the keening Oarsman that builds from a forlorn seafaring-ballad into a driven exhortation to rowing motion, the chirpy Americana-country of Vodka (Mon Amour). But then, the whole gamut of Black Feather Wooden Chair can be termed a striking, unusual, uncompromising and adventurous offering from an enigmatic and elusive young lady: one that cannot easily be ignored - and shouldn't!

David Kidman