One Star Awake
Album: Wintersong EP
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 4
Website: http://www.soundcloud.com/one-star-awake

Just in time for the cold weather appears Bristol-based duo One Star Awake's complimentary seasonal offering, a haunting, gently compelling little release that's attractively and unassumingly delivered. Singer Sue Mara and guitarist Paul Cooke combine forces on two of Sue's unpretentious yet insightful settings of winter-themed poetry (R. L. Stevenson's Christmas At Sea and Carol Ann Duffy's Bee Carol), a delightful sung incantation of Sue's own (Winter Blessing) and a measured account of The Snow It Melts The Soonest. The overriding virtue of One Star Awake is the duo's sheer simplicity of expression: Sue's singing is honest and straightforward, generally unornamented, and thus persuasive in an understated way, whereas Paul's unfussy picking softly embellishing the vocal line in a very much "more is less" mode, the overall soundscape is fresh and uncluttered in texture. And the enchanting Winter Blessing, given its life's pulse by only the sparse beat of a bodhrán, arguably makes the most compulsive case for use of the repeat button at the close of the CD.

David Kidman