This female singer/songwriter hails from the island of St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada and has a number of excellent recordings to her name. Amelia Curran is a very clever songwriter and her use of language points to a mature and realised talent. Her ruminations on life, love and everything in between are sourced from personal experience and observations that place her among a coterie of talented songwriters whose special gifts bring the listener on a rewarding journey.
The ten songs here span a little over thirty minutes and the quality of the writing, together with the players and arrangements, make for a particularly interesting listen.
The opening song Years speaks of the hopes of youth at the turn of the century and the grim realisations that dreams don’t always come true – a call to arms for the disillusioned.
What Will You Be Building is a song that asks what is the measure of a life and what has been our legacy when it comes to leaving this mortal coil and ‘emptying my pockets at last to my maker’. The Modern Man is along a similar theme and questions our place on the Earth and our sense of entitlement.
The Great Escape deals with the concept of freedom and the prisons, both real and apparent, that we make for ourselves. Soft Wooden Towers is a song tinged with personal regret and speaks of how everything is a hammer to a sensitive soul and how “I miss you like hunger in a desert of thirst”.
San Andreas Fault continues the personal and reflective themes of this song set and delves into the darker side of relationships that contrive to break a couple apart. ‘I’ve said sorry all the time’ sings the writer and you feel the pain of her words.
Face on the News is the closing song and deals with our willingness to believe our misconceptions and subjective opinions that turn out to have no basis in any kind of reality. The shock involved in the changing of a perceived view. ‘Time passes, grows up and trespasses’ just about sums up this journey of life. The sudden fade of the song does leave me wanting a more complete conclusion but this is looking for fault in an impressive work that delivers many riches.