Charlotte Martin
On Your Shore
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Charlotte Martin says she's a Goth, but listening to her tap away at the high keys of her piano, it's difficult to think of her as anything but angelic. A classically trained opera singer, Martin has expanded her songwriting a lot more on this release than on her previous ones, and some of that Goth side even comes across in the muted tribal beats of "Limits of Our Love." Most of the songs meander around somewhat, focusing at all times on her voice, but the standout tracks are the darker, brooding ones such as "Something Like a Hero" and the howling wind of "Haunted." That melancholy tone also manifests itself in the incredibly pained stories in the songs, as Martin describes herself as more
Read More hormonal than the contemporaries with whom she's likely to suffer comparisons (namely Tori Amos). But all of those modern ladies take their cue from Joni Mitchell anyway, as Martin does on "Beautiful Life," which would be a great close for the album were it not followed by the umpteenth cover of "Wild Horses.
Martin's literate, tensile music is comparable to a bougainvillea plant: it looks like it's all tendrils and flowers, but when you get closer you see it's actually extremely tenacious and quite thorny. Songs like "Steel" and "Every Time It Rains" throb with cleverly disguised tension in a way that recalls Kate Bush.
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