Frankie Armstrong - The Garden Of Love (1999)

Frankie Armstrong's work, as anyone who has read her wonderful biography will testify, is based far more outside than inside the club'n'festival acoustic music circuit, but you couldn't guess it from listening to "Garden of Love". Despite the presence on several tracks of John Kirkpatrick's accordion and/or Leon Rosselson's guitar, this is a celebration of the human voice in general and Frankie's voice in particular, though with as many as five other voice-boxes on display (and the typically unobtrusive-but-spot-on Fellside production) this can hardly be called a solo album. Which, given Ms. Armstrong's remarkable and successful crusade enabling people to "find" their voices, is entirely appropriate. The closing track, "The Voice That Lives Inside You", sums things up in a most satisfactory manner, while the huge breath and depth of material before it - solo big ballads, four-part Sacred Harp Hymns, the best new writing (including two of her own) - showcases perfectly what a superb musical instrument is the unique and unmistakable voice of Frankie Armstrong.