Reach for the sky: Go Away Birds

Windmill
12 November 2009

With just an electro-acoustic guitar - no effect pedals, no loops - this is an exercise in singing and songwriting pure and simple. Thematically the main concern is love, generally seen in the past tense, feeding many elegantly phrased, often wistful observations on the splashes encountered in paddling in the murky depths of relationships.

What to praise first? There seems to be a perfect balance to the songs, an equal importance for both words and music, a surprisingly rare achievement. And the songs are delivered so wonderfully, with a musician playing and a singer singing; again, not so common as might be supposed. But the singing!  Catherine Ireton's voice is expressive, clear and well articulated; it simply shines. Outstanding.

All the songs aren't perfect, and the constraints of the duo format only allow a certain amount of ground to be covered, but that seems to be more of a creative constraint than a handicap. The recordings add extra layers of sound, but the songs are clearly good enough to travel light.

I can only guess that geography counted against them on the night, as on merit they should be top of any bill they play.