Here We Go 1, 2, 3

There's a personal feel to proceedings on this fifth solo album from the Irish-born, multiple BBC Folk Award nominee. Not surprisingly really, as for the first time she has written the bulk of the ten songs on this album and they come from a tumultuous two years in her life, which included giving birth to a second daughter, losing her mother and starting a record label. It was recorded in a mere ten days in the studio built by Talbot and her musical partner and husband John McCusker in an 18th-century bothy next to where they live in the Scottish Borders. There's a viscerally live, yet commendably relaxed feel to this set of songs, which jumps with grace and confidence from folk and Americana to classic pop. It's surely not incidental that she even manages to take possession of the oft-covered ‘Motherland’ by Natalie Merchant, another singer who cares rather more about direct emotional contact than she does musical boundaries. One of the most impressive of Talbot's own compositions ‘A Song for Rose (Will You Remember Me)’ may be about her own mother's passing, but it's actually full of the promise of life, with Talbot's own daughter singing a lullaby at the end.