Album

Joni Mitchell meets early Fairport Convention? Judee Sill jamming with the Pentangle? The first album by Scotland's Shelagh McDonald has that sort of cross-cultural appeal. It's not easy to remember what different paths folk-rock had taken in the U.S. and the U.K. until one listens to this album and how skillfully it combines intimate, confessional songwriting with a traditionally bent musical inclination. McDonald's voice is a clear, lovely soprano with some of Joni Mitchell's phrasing but none of her more piercing affectations and a bit of Sandy Denny's richness and warmth. The arrangements are mostly in the low-key and largely acoustic style, with drums on most of the songs but a handful of solo piano and voice tracks. (The oddest arrangement choice has to be the buzzing noise in the last half of a swell cover of Gerry Rafferty's "Look Over the Hill and Faraway" that sounds like a young Thurston Moore is sitting in.) There's a slight jazzy tinge to some of the songs, akin to the Pentangle's experiments in folk-jazz fusion, as on the spirited "Waiting for the Wind to Rise." The highlight, though, is the lovely "Ophelia's Song," which appears once in a full-band version featuring an old-timey clarinet and a full string section and later in a stark solo guitar version; both are sublime. The Mooncrest CD adds eight bonus tracks from the demo sessions for McDonald's second and final album, Stargazer, including a remarkable early demo of that album's title track and a pointless version of the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus Is Just Alright." ~ Stewart Mason