Charlotte Gordon Cumming
Album: The Brave Songs
Label: Metamorphosis
Tracks: 11
Website: www.thebravesongs.com

The album cover hints at a thoroughbred pop album with the wildness of a herd of mustangs

stampeding across Dakota hills, seemingly out of control, but every member of the herd aware of its relationship to its neighbouring horse as surely as the guitar knows its relationship to the drums and the drums to the bass and the whole to herd alpha Charlotte Gordon Cumming.

"The Brave Songs" is an album that's difficult to define, though you know the sound. It's undoubtedly country, but dirty in a way that you thought only the blues could get away with and maybe that's because you can feel the blues coursing through the album as well.

And then maybe those pounding drums that drive the tracks for it, well is that rock and yet acoustic, pop, rock, country blues is throwing way to many genres at the sound when it reality its all of them and none of them.

The real factor that binds the whole together is the voice of Charlotte Gordon Cumming and her ability to use it to fuse the album into a damn fine whole, when it could so easily of been an assembly of songs.

"The Brave Songs" has tracks that play on the emotion and others that more or less say that things are what they are and lets get on and make the best of it. It's an album that feels affirming not just for the performer, but for the listener as a sense of self belief becomes an overriding feeling when listening to the album.

In many ways this is a very friendly album, one that can be more than happy to provide a soundtrack for your day, take the tedium out of the hustle and grind and give you space to breathe. It's also one that rewards you for putting your feet up and giving it some attention. If you do you'll realise that there's some anti-war sentiment trying to get out and not a little injustice.

Cummings seems to have a sound that reacts to your mood. "The Brave Songs" is a highly enjoyable album and one that is easy to comeback to and whilst this isn't going to be a classic album that will sit in the charts or become a must have in bedsit land, it will be an album that will still sound fresh in five, ten years time and take a good number of plays along the way.

Neil King