And the bar for unsigned acts on the Scottish music scene gets raised again. Out of the blue, a self-released debut album dropped into my inbox and, lo and behold, it’s a magnificent piece of work that combines the storytelling precision of a born singer-songwriter with musical arrangements that take your breath away. Perth-born Laurie Cameron has folk music in her heart (she does wonderful and haunting things here with Robert Burns’s The Slave’s Lament) but a gentle alt-rock ear for carefully crafting original songs in the vein of, say, Quickbeam and Turning Plates. Bowed strings on Leave Us, Leave Us and harmonium wheeze on Fare Forward match the soft sigh in her voice, while rhythmic piano and percussion on melodic standout Rest And Be Thankful drive things on (kudos to musical partner Ross Lorimer). There’s a commercial side to what she does, too, evident in the Admiral Fallow-style vocal hooks of Back From The Brink, while the title track could be Amy Macdonald covering Susan Vega in a Sufjan Stevens production. It’s as good as anything I’ve heard all year.
Alan Morrison
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