Ah, the songbird! Just how many more can we accommodate in music’s fit-to-bursting menagerie? At least one more I’d say, the sweetly cooing Kate Walsh. After the disappointing fate of Clocktower Park, her ‘lost’ album on Kitchenware, Walsh releases her ‘debut proper’, Tim’s House, on her own label, Blueberry Pie. It is a record devoid of cynicism, beautifully naïve in many respects and all the more engaging for it. For whilst mouthy LDN missies such as Amy Winehouse and Walsh’s fellow MySpace sensation Lily Allen trade on bravado, our Essex girl bewitches through brave songwriting and an unfettered, romantic ardour.
It’s a simple formula, one that has served Walsh well, helping Tim’s House to the top of the iTunes download chart and, in the process, deposing no less a force than Take That. One of the songstress’s most alluring traits is her ability to strike a common chord without resort to mawkish or saccharine sentiments. On ‘French Song’ and ‘Don’t Break My Heart’ the dejection and disappointment that accompanies the inevitable end of the affair is rendered in the most raw, poignant fashion, proving that doomed love is infinitely more interesting than the Hollywood happy-ever-after. The restrained production perfectly compliments these intimate, mainly acoustic numbers, with accordion and strings providing only occasional embellishment.
And then there’s her voice. Sweet and sensual, the sense of longing it conveys is almost tangible. ‘Sensitive female singer-songwriter’...generally, you don’t get more commonplace than that, but a talent as refined as Kate Walsh is a true rarity.