Kelly Oliver - Botany Bay (2018)

Oliver’s bright, sweet voice takes the listener through ten tales of love, loss, murder, ghosts, sex and death – a multiplicity of themes reflected in an equally diverse set of arrangements. The title track, for example, has something of a seabound swagger. Trees They Do Grow High is solemn and understated, Lady Margaret is given an unusual (and dramatic) vocoder treatment, and never more is the album’s variety underlined than when it is followed by Cuckoo’s Nest, the bawdiness of which is sensitively counteracted by some lyrical tweaks and a lovely, gentle guitar backing. Botany Bay is confident, accomplished… and full of surprises.