Latest releases reviewed

CHERYL WHEELER
Defying Gravity
Philo
****

This album is a sweet if doleful surprise. It opens with Since You've Been Gone, a song about "a woman my age" reflecting on a lost relationship. It's an age-old story told with the mix of pathos, craft and simple honesty that marks so much of Cheryl Wheeler's work. Maryland-born Wheeler is a singer-songwriter in the old folk tradition, in which the tune and the story it told were paramount. While many of the 13 tracks on Defying Gravity - Wheeler's first album for six years - reflect the bruised perspective of a mature woman, albeit one who has learned to "count her blessings" and can laugh at life's foibles, there is much to savour in her warm voice, the nimble playing and, not least, her songs. A woman of substance well overdue some recognition this side of the Atlantic. www.rounder.com

CHELY WRIGHT
The Metropolitan Hotel
Dualtone
***

Chely Wright is also a veteran - in her case of the established Nashville scene. This is her sixth album but apparently the first in which she gets to fully express herself. The result is average, spiked with a couple of extraordinary moments. The River and Between a Mother and a Child are both heavy with painful honesty. The latter offloads on Wright's mother in such a graphic way that both can only live to regret it. The former is a more measured piece chronicling the grim embrace of a local river on her friend. Then there is Bumper of My SUV, Wright's response to a woman who abused her because her car sports a sticker supporting the US Marines. That she walks such a delicate path between those for and against is testimony to the divisive nature of the Iraqi conflict (though it's clear who's side she's on). Wright's singing is strong, sometimes impassioned, but the music is predominantly predictable Nashville session fare. A case of make me different, but not too much so. www.chelywright.com

JOHN SPILLANE
Hey Dreamer
EMI Music
****

The Dorian Gray of Irish roots music is still hitting bullseyes. Spillane's been marrying his twin roles of unselfconscious naif and marginal outsider to dramatic effect (particularly in his live performances) since his 1997 solo debut. These days, he thrives on the simplicity of odes to young, untrammelled love (The Dunnes Stores Girl) alongside pastoral observations (The Wild Flowers). Oddly, it's his local references that struggle for air: A Song for Rory Gallagher tries ja little too hard to be liked, and The Mad Woman of Cork is a jagged-edged and unfunny tango that falters on repeated exposure. www.johnspillane.ie - Siobhán Long