Christine Tobin
Pelt
Trail Belle
CHRISTINE Tobin relocated to Brooklyn shortly after recording this latest album so we’ve still to hear what effect her new surroundings will have on the Dubliner’s music.
Chances are she’ll always sound like herself anyway, as these settings of poems and lyrics by Paul Muldoon use a wide variety of arrangements and give hints of influences from the Beatles to John Martyn and Tom Waits,yet could only be Tobin’s creations. She has long had a way of appropriating other people’s words and giving them her unique storytelling spin with a voice that can be dreamy, mischievous, sultry and forthright.
To that talent she’s added composing and arranging gifts that have taken her far beyond any perceived confines of the jazz singer’s milieu, although jazz-friendly ears will enjoy the occasional piano, flute and guitar solos here. Opening track Zoological Positivism Blues inhabits a junkyard groove. Promises, Promises is a complete contrast with its exquisite strings but all of Pelt combines to make an assured, wonderfully imaginative work.
Rob Adams
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