The Smiths - Shakespeare's Sister. Morrissey's lyric has always struck a chord (if you excuse the pun) with me. When presented with an artist and an acoustic guitar I used to feel queasy and apprehensive. Teenage memories of listening and failing to find the magic in Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie would come flooding back. All the things I read talked them up as great artists, more important than The Beatles or even The Wedding Present, but I could never unlock the code. Those shrill and dry acoustic guitars really didn't help. They sounded as old as my grandparents and much less fun.

It was only when I began to discover the likes of Mark Eitzel and Vic Chesnutt that I realised that an acoustic guitar and a broken heart could be a winning situation. If the songs were strong enough then the sparse backing was an asset; it allowed the material to shine. So if you want to clutch an acoustic guitar to your chest and use it to bare your soul, well then the songs had better be cracking and the delivery full of passion. Thankfully Jane Taylor's Montpelier has both of these in abundance.

From the opening Fall On Me to the closing Getting To Me, the songs shimmy, soar and surprise. Taylor has a tight grasp on the dynamics and twists of the song writing art. The delicate little shifts in tone, the brief musical detours and Taylor's crystal sharp tones infuse the tracks with a soulful edge. The fact that the LP was recorded on a shoestring budget has done wonders for the songs: you get the feeling that if Jane had been signed to a major label they would have polished the material until it disappeared; that the gentle and fragile nature of the writing would have been lost beneath an attempt to make this sound like Dido or Jem.

The Leonard Cohen-meets-Eleanor Rigby waltz of My Street is a little jewel of kooky observation. Tori Amos-meets-Beth Orton on the back streets of Bristol. The strings like a gentle whisper add an undertow, a sorrowful counter point. The swinging double bass backing of Chef perfectly frames Taylor's pure vocal tones. It is a plea for someone to starting living life again and is warm and encouraging where it could have been harsh and hectoring. The scat singing at the end shows off Taylor's range - this girl can jive.

Kate Bush seems to have leased out here piano on Mirror Mirror. The twinkling piano that drives the song is reminiscent of Kate at her best. The brisk acoustic guitars and finger picked melody of Feels Good are as thrilling as the first flush of love that it describes. Hit The Ground chimes likes church bells on Christmas morning, the rhythmic guitars bright and the interplay with the piano dancing like litter in a hurricane.

You can tell the material was written mainly on a battered old guitar but when it's this strong, well, who cares? Okay, so no envelopes have been pushed musically, no new ground broken, but this is a heartfelt and delightful record.

  share with:  Facebook | Digg | other sites