Peppermint Radio

The likes of Duran Duran may have given the concept of the covers album a bad name, but the idea of reworking other people's songs isn't necessarily always just a last resort for artists with writer's block. Brighton-based singer/songwriter Kate Walsh, who became the first unsigned act to top digital charts with her 2007 low-budget bedroom-recorded sophomore outing Tim's House, backs up this theory with an album that is possibly the most creative of her career. Named after the imaginary station she pretended to host as a child, Peppermint Radio features 11 interpretations of the tracks that have influenced her musical output. But while those who have heard the likes of 2003 debut Clocktower Park and 2009's most recent Light & Dark may be expecting a predictable array of Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush reworkings, this fourth release through her own Blueberry Pie label is a surprisingly eclectic affair that suggests she's just as at home listening to an early-'90s indie dance compilation as she is Blue and Hounds of Love. Blur's lo-fi Brit-pop number one "Beetlebum" is given an even more sinister edge thanks to its stabbed horror movie-esque strings and gothic choral finale, the album's predominantly minimal piano/cello-based production lends a contemplative and mournful air to her adaptation of Erasure's '80s Hi-NRG favorite "A Little Respect," and Duran Duran's synth pop classic "Save a Prayer" receives an enchanting nu-folk makeover, complete with twinkling music box instrumentation and infectious handclaps. Elsewhere, the Shamen's acid-rave anthem "Move Any Mountain" is unrecognizable as a melancholic torch song, Walsh's gorgeously hushed tones perfectly complement the delicately raw retooling of the Cure's "Lullaby," and she sounds uncannily like Harriet Wheeler on the album's highlight, a spellbinding performance of "Monochrome," a little-known album track from the Sundays' Static & Silence. Her stripped-back arrangement of EMF's indie disco staple "Unbelievable" doesn't quite work without the original's anthemic guitar riff, while her faithful rendition of former touring partners Turin Brakes' "Feeling Oblivion" lacks the inventive spark that effortlessly runs through the album. But overall, the "outside the box" material chosen and the affectionate and beautifully understated treatments they're afforded ensure that Peppermint Radio is one of the most delightful and heart-warming covers albums of the year. ~ Jon O'Brien|