Martha Tilston
Album: Machines OF Love And Grace
Label: Squiggly
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.marthatilston.co.uk

This latest offering from free-spirited singer-songwriter Martha manages the wholly desirable coup of being at once enchanting and intelligent in its often challenging but always honest contemplation of the conflict between human life and the unavoidable technology of the modern age, a theme which pervades the majority of the songs therein.

The very wording of the album's title, a nod to a beat poem by Richard Brautigan, indicates that here's an artist who really thinks about such things, and invariably finds a clever and ear-catching means of expression, both in the literary and musical senses. Any charge of over-fragility in her singing style can, and should, be banished very quickly, although a certain measure of vulnerability is also both essential and inevitable when considering the subject-matter of Martha's songwriting, notwithstanding the tough but eloquent stance she needs to take when sensibly confronting the values and dilemmas of today's machine-age.

Martha's defiantly quaversome delivery is not quite the paradox it seems, and proves ideally suited to her powerful imagery, whether on the gently, proudly awestruck impressionism of Stags Bellow or the caustic condemnation of money and greed that forms the pair of tracks Wall Street and More. Martha's necessarily confrontational lyrical vision of our situation is given intriguing musical settings that mirror its restless nature and the similarly unsettling nature of the world we inhabit.

Sublimely creative, edgy acoustic textures are provided by genius producer/lead guitarist and long-time collaborator Nick Marshall with Matt Kelly and Robin Tyndale-Biscoe and occasional contributions from Matt Tweed, Tim Cotterell, Beth Perry, Jon Thorne, Steve James, Darren Phillips and a small number of carefully chosen backing vocalists. The set contains very many memorable moments, both lyrically and musically - from the disquieting imaginings of Staircase to the personal yet universal exhortations of Silent Women; the insistent mantras of Suburbia; the eerie, intense and compelling bonus track Lifeboat For The Soul (taken I think from a live radio session); and the weird and almost tribal cacophony that introduces Survival Guide. And Shiny Gold Car, which takes the time-honoured theme of criticising the music biz by comparing it with a machine, just manages to escape predictability and cliché. Just occasionally Martha seems content to sublimate her own unique voice to that of one of her key inspirations, Joni Mitchell, even to the extent of (perhaps) overdoing the knowing namechecking of her songs (on Butterflies) and paying obvious homage to Joni's style of writing and especially phrasing (on Blue Eyes); I'm not saying that's a bad thing at all, just that it's rather noticeable.

Even so, I'd not be without any of the songs on this entirely magical and consistently impressive CD, which confirms Martha's status as one of the most special and talented of our contemporary folk-acoustic artists.

David Kidman