Maeve Mackinnon
Album: Once Upon An Olive Branch
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.maevemackinnon.com

Back in 2007, Maeve won the Scots Traditional Music Award for Up and Coming Artist of the Year, then soon afterward she released her debut album Don't Sing Love Songs (on the Footstompin' label). At the time, its freshness of outlook and execution impressed me almost as much as Maeve's own quite striking singing voice. That album was showcased at 2008's Celtic Connections, but although I was kindof aware of her work with Michael McGoldrick and the band Sketch, I'd not heard much more of her in the interim before this new disc arrived in my mailbag, so its appearance was doubly welcome.

If anything, her singing, while still retaining its basic qualities of sensuousness and grit, has now developed into an even more eloquent expressive instrument, now seeming also to incorporate a newly playful element, a sense of confident abandon, that's well mirrored in the slightly puckish yet often assuredly experimental nature of the musical settings on this new disc. Under the guiding hand of producer Angus Lyon (who also plays Rhodes, piano and accordion), are paired the ever-inventive grooves conjured by Fraser Fifield (whistle, sax), Innes Watson (fiddle, guitar) and James Lindsay (bass) with the trademark creative percussion eccentricities of Signy Jakobsdottir, The varied nature of the musical settings takes us on a journey from the exotic, often eerily spine-tingling atmospherics of the nostalgic, keening pibroch-style Western Isles emigrant song Hòro Iollaraigh (a standout track) to the relaxed jazz-funk grooves of the Hebridean song O Phàil O Ho Ghraidh and the more upfront tonalities and momentum of Maeve's own composition The Olive Branch (her public songwriting debut, and an extraordinarily powerful one at that), which reflects on the troubles in the Middle East with a timely maturity.

Activism is not a new strand in Maeve's song predilections, however, for a keen political conscience had pre-dated her now-parallel interest in, and experience of Gaelic song, and the shared experiences of both cultures have informed Maeve's choice of songs to cover here, from the bittersweet Saw Doctors number Sugar Town to Ewan MacColl's achingly poignant The Father's Song (the latter given an almost Lied-like power with its stripped-down, mostly solo piano, backing). Fully half of the album delivers Maeve's special takes on Gaelic material, while further incidentally reaffirming the Gaelic and Irish traditions' kinship with more than able renditions of Kind Friends And Companions and She Moved Through The Fair (the latter sung a cappella). I've since learnt that Maeve's been writing an original song suite (The Exile, now under development as an opera) that links the diasporan experiences of Gaels and Africans.

Once Upon An Olive Branch is a clear-sighted and very persuasive collection, and it's well recorded too. To compensate for the suitably economic digipack, full lyrics and translations are available on Maeve's website.

David Kidman