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Spotlight Album: Lisa O'Kane   "am i too blue"

Romance And Finance / Little Black Cloud / Am I Too Blue / My Sweet Love Ain't Around / Pineola / Lovin' You Again / Wall Of Tears / All The Way With You / Wanting, Wanting You / Like An Old Fashioned Waltz / Old Crossroad Is Waitin' / The Valley

This is one of those albums that comes right out of left field and offers much unexpected pleasure. No information is available on the artist, though many of those involved have track records.

Pianist Skip Edwards and fiddler Scott Joss are members of Dwight Yoakam's band, bassist Taras Prodanuik, currently with Lucinda Williams, has also played with Yoakam and is also part of that fine West Coast group, the Bum Steers, as are songwriter Mark Fosson, who contributes the delightful, wispy Little Black Cloud here, and guitarist Edward Tree whose production this album is.

Others with strong pedigrees include bassist David Jackson (another Yoakam alumnus) and drummer James Cruce (ex J.J. Cale), both now working with critically acclaimed singer Teresa James, who herself runs up on bv's at one point. Add in another support vocalist Kellie Coffey, who's currently in the top 50 in the country charts in her own right, and Am I Too Blue makes for a very potent mix.

As this is an indie release, there is no major label pressure on the material and song-wise it's quite an eclectic bunch. There are some in-house originals, a couple of Lucinda Williams songs, some obscure old non-Music Row outside things, a pop song gone country and classic old timely material.

The accompaniment is warm, intimate and folky, leaning on the acoustic side with mandolin and fiddles to the fore. O'Kane has lovely, clear and radiant vocals. In her middle range when she emotes she strongly echoes Kathy Chiavola - and if I were to say that she shows shades of the Chiavola greatness, I doubt if I could pay a singer a greater compliment

Amongst the original material is a great opener in Romance And Finance. Penned by O'Kane, mandolin player Ken O'Malley and Edward Tree, this is a real firecracker with the drums spelling out a solid Bo Diddley rhythm from the word go, while accordion and mandolin add their respective colour as the cut progresses. A breathless, high energy performance that stays just this side of frantic.

Of the two Lucinda Williams tracks, Am I Too Blue, which provides the album title, is spare and reflective with delicate guitar from Tree and dreamy strings courtesy of Edwards. The other, Pineola, is fairly grisly stuff, a grungy death song with Ode To Billy Joe styled observationals.

The rather anonymously titled Lovin' You Again conceals an amazingly detailed, and what seems a highly personal, song. Not just a song written because it's time to write another one a la 16th Avenue, but a piece written by Richard Ferris with unusual, intimate and private references that you just have to believe are from real life.

Over five concentrated stanzas plus a repeated bridge, the story such as it is unfolds with a desperate call from a phone booth from one lover to another - although the relationship is slightly ambiguous throughout - "it never gets no better and it couldn't get no worse" and again, "I'll spend an hour hatin' you 'til the cab pulls in" .

It arrives, she pays, there is a brief exchange between the taxi driver and the woman protagonist - he thinks he's made this run before, she doesn't think so, but ''... what's it matter anyway".

Once home, there are all kinds of matters for the pair to confront but I won't give too much more away. What the track lacks in big commercial hooks is more than made up for in atmosphere and tension, all beautifully underscored by sonorous cello lines. An unusual and absorbing item.

The two old chestnuts are respectively Hank's My Sweet Love Ain't Around with aching vocal glissandos, muttering fiddle, and finely picked guitar inputs over a cooking back beat in one of the best versions of this song that I can recall, and a chunkily rendered workout of Bill Monroe's Old Crossroad is Waitin'. There is sound advice imploring one to live the good life or face the diabolical consequences, with more good picking on show and O'Kane's controlled yodels.

Like An Old Fashioned Waltz is an early Fairport Convention track written by the tragic Sandy Denny that Emmylou discovered and cut on her White Shoes album. It's a pretty downbeat and sombre piece with only a piano and string accompaniment and probably the most pop the album gets.

Can't think of anything that doesn't work; even the uptempo take on the wonderful K.T Oslin's Wall Of Tears is fine. Am I Too Blue is an interesting and ultimately highly satisfactory piece of work. If you like country with an acoustic tinge, good but understated picking, non-hackneyed and carefully selected material and a terrific new voice, look no further than this. Jon Philibert ' Country Music People

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