Kath Reade is a songbird, which perhaps a kingfisher is not (maybe someone can enlighten me on that). She has a lovely voice.

   I enjoyed writing that, as it’s simple and complete. The voice is used on a wide range of self-penned songs, with a little help in the playing and backing singing from Tom McConville, Rob Van Sante, Shaun Reade and Jean Deakin. But “She has a lovely voice” won’t fill a review nor, perhaps, tell readers enough, so here are elaborations.

   The voice is strong and she sings as though well within her range and power. She conveys a kind of truth in the singing of the words she has written, which suggests an engagement with the personae and the subjects, whether human beings, hawks or steam trains. There are at least a couple of tracks on which she reminds me of Claudine Langille, and I can’t pay her a higher compliment than that.

   The words are not complex and are immediately accessible. They might not survive multiple hearings, but that would be, I guess, when the pleasure of the sound takes over. The title track refers, among other things, to the colour of a swimming pool, and there is something rather gently sensuous and sensuously gentle about swimming in a pool (ideally somewhere like Crete) which is comparable to the way these songs caress the ear. The words, though, are apt. Again, I enjoyed being able to write that single clause sentence. Only very occasionally does Kath Reade err from the simple to the simplistic and when she does I think how much I’d like to hear her sing the songs of other people as well. But there is a truth in what she sings which comes down to the voice, again: unadorned, intimate, and pure.

Belinda Hakes