REVIEW FROM www.livingtradition.co.uk

This is a second album from Kirsty McGee, a highly rated young singer songwriter who has been touring extensively on the folk and acoustic circuit. When she visited my local club she easily held the audience with a series of intimate songs without a shell, delivered with a blend of confidence and vulnerability that clutched at the heart.

Listening to this 46-minute album can be a gruelling experience for a typical folk bloke who loves his story songs, but singer songwriters - of whatever age and either sex - will sing about what they must. Kirsty's necessary themes are lost love, confinement, sky watching, abandonment, sweet regret. Maybe she used these 13 songs to say farewell to a troubled time of unseasonal frost. Her lyrics and her quiet, emotion-charged singing show skills of high quality, and songs like Plane Vapours, Bitter Aloe, and the unaccompanied Safe Harbour Song are models of their kind. If they don't speak to you, they may speak to a young friend of yours.

Her musical direction is underlined by the acoustic instrumentation. Musicians are Neill MacColl on guitar, Matt Martin on mandolin, Jonny Bridgewood on double bass, Roy Dodds on the gentlest of drums, and a certain John Spiers on melodeon and piano accordion. Production is by Boo Hewerdine who has worked with Eddie Reader among others.