Annie Keating – TRICK STAR
Annie Keating TRICK STAR Independent ***1/2 Powerful singer-songwriter fare with uplifting anthems and downbeat insights Brooklyn singer-songwriter Annie Keating has written a song and named her seventh album after the bike she had when she was a kid. The song is a celebration of the freedom the bike bestowed and elsewhere there are a couple of equally uplifting moments. These come from opening song You Bring The Sun and Time Come Help Me Forget, a song with a power-pop beat and hooky tune which belies its title. It’s not all like that though. The album closer Phoenix, the most powerful piece here, is enhanced by a sweet-voiced choir and builds to a glorious peak. Between times Keating treads familiar paths of lost love, regret and shoulda, coulda, woulda territory but each time brings something – an insight, a melody, a vulnerable voice, a truth – that makes the songs hit home, and hit home hard. The songs took eight months to write but only a weekend to record as live in a studio converted from a fire station. There’s certainly a spontaneity to the performances and an intimacy to Keating’s vocals that bring to mind a sweeter-voiced Lucinda Williams. Despite the championing of Bob Harris she remains a not particularly well known name but this sort of high quality release deserves to change that. Jeremy Searle
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