Stephanie Manns, Fool Like Me (stephaniemanns.com)
Edinburgh-born and Glasgow based, Stephanie Manns is a country girl who idolises Dolly Parton and has clearly studied the model well for her own songwriting. She has some pleasant tunes on this, her second, album too, but sadly the lyrics don't match up to the melodies, with the single, Broken Heart, for example, lumbered with couplets like "I'm not the girl I was before/I've seen the writing on the wall", and a truly regrettable "Whoa, whoa, whoa" chorus. Produced by Sam Falle, it is in many ways the least successful track, however, and the sound world Graeme Duffin and Sandy Jones have created locally at the Foundry Music Lab suits her style rather better. The transports of simplicity that are songs like Walking You Home and Last Train Home work better than attempts at verbal complexity in Bonnie & Clyde and the reworked Sloe Gin, which featured on an early EP. Both vocally and in her writing, Manns seems much more comfortable on ballads than up-tempo numbers, but everything is a bit four-square and the whole album wears its influences rather too obviously and without any distinguishing wit.
It is also, by the by, Creative Scotland-supported, and the formula for those recording awards seems increasingly obscure.
Keith Bruce
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