Julie Fowlis
Album: Mar A Tha Mo Chridhe (As My Heart Is)
Label: Machair Records
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.juliefowlis.com

A lot of water has flown under the bridge since this album was first released, back in 2005, on Skye's Macmeanmna label. For most of the time before that, Julie had primarily been acknowledged (and then only within the niche market of Scottish folk) as an accomplished instrumentalist (on small pipes, oboe and whistle), having appeared on the band Brolum's debut CD 7.11. But the release of this album was actually the culmination and consolidation of Julie's fortuitous change of musical focus. For it had been on a mere whim that Julie had decided to enter the Pan-Celtic Sean-nós Competition in 2004; she won, and this gave her further confidence in her vocal abilities. Thus she got to sing more while performing with the band Dòchas, and a meteoric 2005 concluded with Julie being voted Gaelic Singer Of The Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards…

So the title may still be a bit of a mouthful, but this fine CD sure did its job, and lifted Julie's profile considerably. Listening to it again after seven years, it still captivates. It's basically a well balanced disc of traditional Gaelic song, with three tune sets thrown in for good measure. And it proclaims, exactly as the folk world at large has come to realise over the intervening years since the disc's original release, that Julie's blessed with one of the purest voices you can imagine, blending delicacy and power with a really lovely tone and superb diction.

In retrospect, the scale of achievement of Mar A Tha Mo Chridhe might be judged all the more amazing because of Julie's steadfast refusal to compromise - for here she'd bravely resisted the temptation to include any songs sung in English (which might allegedly have enhanced her "commercial appeal"), preferring instead to concentrate on Gaelic songs from her native North Uist. And with hindsight, this was a wise decision, not only in view of the complete artistic success of the result but also of the way it launched her now-main career as a singer. In doing so, Julie uncovered a whole new potential - and appreciative - audience for Gaelic song through her winning way with phrasing, her innate gift for leading and following the natural flow of the language and the story it's telling. And the elegant clarity of her own vocal expression is mirrored in the clean playing she commands from her accompanying musicians in the simple and sharply defined arrangements on this disc. Textures are light and airy, providing absolutely the right framework for Julie's singing; since, with musicians of the calibre of John McCusker, Kris Drever, (Danú's) Eamon Doorley, John Doyle, Iain MacDonald, Allan Henderson and Ingrid Henderson, quality, sympathy and deftness of touch can be taken as given, while there's also a delightful fleet-footed spontaneity to their music-making. My personal favourites among the 12 sparkling jewels on display include a beautifully moulded rendition of Mo Bhean Chomain (on which Julie herself plays cor anglais), a vibrant piece of puirt (mouth music) and the (unaccompanied) closing track Moladh Uibhist, a paean to the island of North Uist.

As I said, Mar A Tha Mo Chridhe was a sure and quite stunning debut, and one which fully merits re-promotion here in the form of this re-mastered and re-packaged reissue. (At the same time, by the way, the track Tha Mo Ghaol Air Aird A'Chauin, which was lifted from the album for use on the Disney/Pixar animated feature Brave, has just been released as a single, coupled with Julie's 2009 non-album cover of Lennon & McCartney's Blackbird.)

David Kidman