Artist: Annie Keating
Album: Make Believing
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 01/20/2015
Annie Keating first picked up a guitar at age 12, but her talent was first spotted by BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris in 2008. She hasn’t stopped dazzling listeners since then. She’s been compared to Allison Krauss, Willie Nelson, Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris and other A-list artists–and deservedly so.
This wonderful album is unabashedly joyous folk-rock, pure acoustic beauty perfectly matched to her voice. When she sings, you can feel her arms wrapping around you. This set would have been at home in the mid-60’s, or any other era–at once timely and timeless.
Two cuts, “Foxes” and “Just Up Ahead,” ripple like a clear mountain stream, assertively beautiful, but never cloying nor saccharine. They crawled gently down my spine and into my heart. The ninth cut, “Lost Girls,” is a moving bit of nostalgia and timid hope (“Could it be there’s a place for the lost girls?”) The set closes with the wise and optimistic “If You Want to Fly.”
This is a work of art forged by an artist in her prime, comfortable in her strength and ability. It is an album to get lost in, then emerge from the other side, smiling and a whole lot better for the experience.
– Robert Myers
Be the first to comment!