The Hard Ground
Album: Broken Conversations
Label: Fifa
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.thehardground.com

An impressively distinctive debut album from this Cork-based band, and a disc which shows at once that they have a lot going for them.

Probably the first thing to give special mention is the fact that the four-piece sports two strongly individual and very different (but highly complementary) lead-singers in pianist Marlene Enright and guitarist Pat Carey. Marlene is sensual and forthright yet nothing less than enchanting, while Pat is husky and rough-diamond in tone and passion, and yet the effect is strangely affecting when they duet - as on songs like Bad Faith and Reckless.

The second major thing to note is that the band's songs - all jointly penned by Marlene and Pat - are inspirationally cloaked in inventive, thoughtful, often quite lavishly orchestrated settings which in many cases involve a small string ensemble or a brass section (members of the Irish National Concert Orchestra). It's little wonder, then, that the listener's attention is grabbed at once on putting the disc in the player, with the jaunty yet sinister Berlinerie of single cut Pawn followed by the cautiously nutty-boys tread of Dance Of A Lady and the tough-yet-vulnerable rock gestures of A Man, A God, A Woman. Later, Drinkin' To Heaven takes a sleazy Al Bowlly cabaret stance, while Mr Boom forces out all the brass stops and Nearly Man is the closest the band come to Guthrie-esque pathos.

The eerie Back Road blows in from the dusty Emmylou/Cowboy Junkies mid-western landscapes, while A Spirit Lament closes proceedings on a pensive, philosophical, even mildly elegiac note (that final string cadence is rather Charles Ives!). And do leave the disc playing for the uncredited hidden track, a seriously spooky breeze-blown lullaby.

There's a lot of variety on this set, with intense and telling use of dynamic contrast. It's not in any way a typical "band" album, and yet The Hard Ground does exhibit a keen sense of identity as very much its own creative force and personality. One that's most definitely to be reckoned with.

David Kidman