Linda McLean

CD: No Language
(Bongo Beat Records)

Americana-UK

No Language is a Rockin Muther Trucker well worth getting hold of, and Linda McLean is a Rock Goddess. Fact.

It would be easy to lump Canadian-based Linda McLean in with artists such as Lucinda Williams, Kathleen Edwards, and even Aimee Mann; there are certainly the occasional strong similarities. However, given the relative paucity of successful female singer/songwriters in relation to their male counterparts, it would be the most obvious, and perhaps lazy comparison.

It would be easy to lump Canadian-based Linda McLean in with artists such as Lucinda Williams, Kathleen Edwards, and even Aimee Mann; there are certainly the occasional strong similarities. However, given the relative paucity of successful female singer/songwriters in relation to their male counterparts, it would be the most obvious, and perhaps lazy comparison.

In fact, this album is terrific, it is well recorded and produced (by John Whynot), and Linda McLean is a Stand Out artist in her own right.

No Language is a highly personal collection of songs about the changing of life's seasons, aspiration and ambition, friendship, and of course, love, and lots of it. McLean unashamedly bears all and sundry, capturing life's richest moments and serving them up to us in a deliciously addictive concoction of swirling harmonies, rocking guitars, and some nifty drumming action in there to boot.

The delightfully catchy ÒLove nor MoneyÓ articulates what people have been feeling for ages: you can't get anything genuine anymore, we're just left with rock singers who ÒMove their moves, move their mouths, and don't say a thingÓ, and Òblank faces in high places, rolling by on a merry-go-round.Ó

Moving on to songs of a more personal note, ÒAlmost AlienÓ is a fast driving track with a gorgeous melody, catchy harmonies, and beautiful vocals. Singing about letting things go and facing the future, ÒStaring into this lonely night, warm myself with candle light,Ó her powerful vocals convey both fear and optimism.

A quick switch of style gives us the heart-rendering Lives Change, and frankly if this doesn't have you crying into your Pinot Grigio by the end, nothing will. The delightfully jingly Amsterdam Canals is contemplative, and evocative, ÒAmsterdam Canals/ Johnny Cash is never coming back/ Heard it on the walls/ Broken hearts will remember,Ó which then leads into the seductive and quietly forceful ÒBurn the BoatsÓ. Ahhhhh, what a tune to sink into. McLean's vocals, formerly powerful and feisty, all of a sudden become incredibly vulnerable, resolving with a stunning, ever so slightly primal, vocal arrangement, not entirely dissimilar to Sarah McLachlan.

The genre to which McLean belongs is notorious for its hand-on-heart, heart-on-sleeve quality, but in this album, brutal honesty is achieved without a smidgen of pretension. More so, it screams the notion that although we all get older chronologically, we don't change much in our heads. Really we're still all trying to work things out, and it's ok to do that, which in itself, is quite heartening. (9/10)

-- Sian Claire Owen

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