Alistair Ogilvy, July Moon (July Moon Records)
Singer Alistair Ogilvy certainly has the knack of gathering good folk around him. Following his Mattie Foulds-produced trad-repertoire Greentrax debut, Leaves Sae Green, this very different follow-up has Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow in the producer's chair, Hollywood score-writer Craig Armstrong providing the string arrangement for opening track Deep Blue Sea, and Gillian de Groote and Fiona Robertson of the BBC SSO joining Orcadian fiddler Kristan Harvey to play it. It is to Abbot's credit that the many disparate elements of the sound-world of July Moon gel as an album. The Armstrong strings are as distinctively him as the accompanying vocals on that song are obviously those of his associate Jerry Burns. She teams up with Karen Mathieson and Roslyn Potter to provide the big chorus on the title track, and Siobhan Wilson supplies writing and performing input to two tracks, with Mathieson returning to duet on Clasping Sea, which is almost a 1950s ballad. The rock muscle exercised on that, Left Over Shells and My Heart Aches begin to suggest some Mike Scott development in Ogilvy's own writing, but it is yet at a formative stage. With such good company to surround his fine, if sometimes a little mannered, voice, he is surely on the right lines.
Keith Bruce
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