Tristan Mackay
Album: Wire & Wood
Label: Battered Hat
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.tristanmackay.com

His debut Out Along the Wire earned British Blues Award nominee Tristan Mackay favourable comparisons to Messrs Knopfler, Mayer and Buckley, which for all that might sound like a firm of publishing lawyers, acts as both a workable introduction to the man's music and a vague blueprint for his second album.

The skilfully executed guitar work, the depth of craft evident in the songwriting and the breadth of emotions to be detected in the lyrics are more than enough to commend this record to the uninitiated. For those who have been this way before, tracks like the gentle closing Lullaby For Layla show Mackay can handle simplicity just as well as complexity in a song that's a straightforward love poem to his infant daughter, but also articulates the rush of sometimes conflicted feeling experienced by new fathers since time began.

Elsewhere, The Wine & Me and Black Sheep add a folky introspection and perhaps the clearest example yet of Mackay's admirable decision to sing in purely English tones and not some dreadful mid-Atlantic approximation of another culture.

Its acoustic setting renders the album in a more intimate space than its predecessor, but the restrained and tasteful Hammond organ interventions of heavyweight session men Don Airey (Deep Purple, Brian May, Ozzy) and Ricky Peterson (David Sanborn, George Benson, Anita Baker, Prince) not only show the company Mackay is capable of keeping, but the maturity with which he approaches both his songwriting and his recording.

He's no doubt helped in respect of the latter by Grammy-winning producer Martin Levan (John Martyn, Ralph McTell and any number of West End shows), but make no mistake, Tristan Mackay is his own man and it looks like he's got what it takes to be around for a while.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk