Tracey Browne & Raevennan Husbandes
Album: East By North West
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.raevennan.com
www.traceybrowne.co.uk

Connections, workshops and festivals are blood vessels, kidneys and liver of the music world, essential to keeping the whole alive, ensuring the creativity of the brain, the passion and emotions of the heart and the lungs that breathe life into it all, have the other factors needed to ensure survival.

Cambridge is my connection to both artists, I've known Tracey from her work at the Club Tent and on a recommendation saw Raevennan perform there last year. It's a workshop that brought the two inspirational songwriters together and "East By North West" is the album that burns from those sparks of creativity.

The title refers, inversely, to the home locations of Tracey and Raevennan and also provides great allegory into the album it's self, suggesting, as it does, an album that will take you in a number of different directions, not all obvious from the outset.

One of the things that I was most surprised by is how much of a band album this is. Flawed preconception had put in my head the idea of a sparsely instrumented album, with guitars supporting the vocal, but the reality is far from that. "East By North West" has a rich, filled out sound that gives the vocals a lush environment to work in, both solo and in delightful harmony.

This is a strong album, in the main penned as co-writers and one which sounds as if the two are very much on each other's frequency as indeed they are on the only cover, "On Raglan Road" that also shows they capabilities as arrangers of other people's works, though it is the self penned material, resplendent with great phrases, both in lyric and instrumentation, that delivers the piece.

If there is a gripe and it's a small one, at nine tracks, it feels just a smidge short, but the adage does always suggest leaving them wanting more and if push comes to shove, there is a repeat button.

Like many albums these days, particularly those that are self released, this is an album that was part funded by Kickstarter and I must say there will be a lot of investors listening to this knowing that their faith in the writing and performing ability of Tracey and Raevennan has been rewarded and then some and it would be rude not to take advantage of their largess. "East By North West" is a good direction to take.

Neil King