Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 31/07/07
Label: Melodramatic/Mercury

With KT Tunstall kindly having blasted off the doors to the establishment for ballsy Scots folk-rock songstresses, it was only a matter of time before someone like 19-year-old Amy Macdonald appeared to knock the socks of Ken Bruce again. Take a big, hefty, traditional Caledonian folk voice, with tints of Carole King and Dolores O' Riordan. An acoustic guitar galvanized by a fully-amped band. Songs that perch cross-ankled on the comfy middleground between critic-pleasing and unit-shifting. A no-bull attitude and a slight aroma of feminism. The "KT's little sister" label will no doubt follow and irk her for the immediate future, but it's hard to think of a better one.

The Travis-loving teenager started making music at 12 - her childish fingerprints are both the album's strength and weakness. For while cuts like the toe-tapping "This Is The Life" (written after blagging her way into a Pete Doherty aftershow party) and windswept "Run" capture youth's dewy-cheeked, bedroom-trashing passion with aplomb, there's a naivety about the earnest "Youth Of Today" ("You say 'in my day we were better behaved' / But it's not your day no more / We are the youth of today / Don't care what you have to say") that comes close to toe-curling, despite the song's non-lyrical resemblance to much of Tom McCrae's soul-stirring debut album.

She also has in spades the educated teenager's weakness for 'issues'. See the Dido-esque "Footballers Wife", a rather po-faced case, albeit one with a nice underlaid string section, of shooting fish in a barrel. She is much more fun when having a good old knees-up - see the 'old joanna' piano, "Vicar In A Tutu" rhythm, and good old Glaswegian gobbiness ("Won't you buy me a drink and I'll tell her what I think if she gets in my way") of "Barrowland Ballroom" and Hispanic oompah vibe of "Wish For Something More", a marvelous, lustlorn riff on the chilling phrase "I love you like a friend".

It's hard not to feel mildly intimidated by one so young, so wildly self-assured, so evidently knowing of musical onions ("I wish I saw Bowie playing on that stage", she sings) and so aware of her likely future. Notice how key track "Let's Start A Band" ascends from the humble campfire sensibility of "Give me a guitar and I'll be a troubadour" to the barefacedly ambitious "Give me a festival and I'll be a Glastonbury star" (she was, in fact, sequenced between Kate Nash and Chas n' Dave in Pilton this summer). That she might also be drawing a parallel with folk music's transition over the decades from community to commodity is a lovely thought.

On balance, this is impressive, hook-laden fare. And if her dad's reading: well worth binning university for.

    by Anna Britten