The missus and I really enjoyed the cool, perpendicular strut of her last/first album, "Me Oh My" in 2010. And "Cyrk" is in a similar vein - pop from an angle. She describes it herself as "Cut a remote island in two and place one half to your ear…" and "a time travel travelogue which continually returns the sea. I mostly write about the sea, matters of the heart and animals – or a mish-mash of all three". So it's nice to know that people can have ideas as impenetrable as I do about their own music.
A kitchen table psychedelic feel of birds in the garden and mushrooms in the tea. Domestic scale. "Falcon Eyed" gets stuck straight in with a poptastic approximation of a Velvets groove - but a Velvets with a Syd or Nick Drake tugging at the melodic strings. "Puts Me To Work" sounds a wonkily upbeat theme from a Seventies sitcom about a dysfunctional married couple - "You kill me with empathy." Cate's voice is so crisp and playful she could be doing Jackanory. She seems to mumble and trill at the same time. "Greta" tumbles into tumbledown honky tonk piano and solo Salvation Army trumpet and military snare.
"What I hoped for most/Was to be his greatest host/He'd make my hands his home" Cate sings on "The Man I Wanted" before a spooky recorder interlude. There's a lot of off-kilter chat about men. That would be the matters of the heart, I suppose. "Through The Mill" has a Bronte Country feel of moors and sea voyages and isolation.
As a follow up to the 2010 album, there may not be as many immediate hooks; but her path will carry on a while longer yet.
Rating: Mish Mash out of Travelogue
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