38th... Autumn's music

O Seasons O Castles.

This will be short: If you track down only one of my blogged CDs, make it this one. This was Katell Keineg's debut, way back in 1994. It is ambitious and admirably fulfills that ambition. Attributes include her smokey, powerful Irish voice; lyrics as vivid and dense as good poetry; her musical style being folk rock, but with no fear of grappling with other styles, from punkish outbursts to spoken word; a deft handling of complicated, ambiguous emotions; and to cap it, a raw emotive honesty that leaves you believing she's baring her soul. There are few enough who can do that, and fewer still with Katell's consistency.

And yet...have YOU heard of this woman?

Hestia starts in a difficult vein, brimming with symbols; an acoustic track with spare and eloquent backing. Having been "hiding from a world I could no longer proceed in" Katell's fractured narrative takes in moods of defiance, desire, aversion and pity, leaving a distinct emotional footprint despite the confusion of the lyric. Hestia, for example, is the Greek goddess of the hearth, perhaps the most humble and benevolent of that arrogant and bloodthirsty pantheon - traditionally paid little attention, though Katell invokes her here.

Partisan is pure pop, one of those hip, swinging, joyous numbers that cram lyrics into tiny spaces - just over three minutes! Even better, the song is about connection; speed sung so you have to pay attention to try and catch the words, which are all about wanting to know you. "Place myself behind your eyes and watch you watch me looking in." If that phrase made your head spin in a good way, you'll be sure to like this song.

Cut is another about human connection; a cooler outing, taking in possibility at the same time as frailty. The old question - engage with the world or retreat from it?

Then there's Bop, a title which seems ironic at first, as it starts slowly and wearily, building to frenzy in such a way that it doesn't seem like a cliche. She sounds like she means all of it, looking into a bleak future with what becomes a post-punk defiance. It should sound out of place on the record, but it builds so naturally that it just seems appropriate.

Burden is likely to alienate people - her voice as she shouts the chorus is hard for me to take. On the other hand, the song itself is a morose, atmospheric dedication to beauty and the price put on it that obscures one person from another. Suffer the chorus; you might get used to it and the rest is an amazing song.

Things lighten up with Franklin, about a woman who's stepping out of a useless relationship and is on her way to freedom. It's another standout for the emotion expressed, becoming one of the most straightforward and instantly likable songs of her repertoire.

Conch Shell is just plain weird, a one minute WTF moment, a spoken word poem comparing the narrator's (dare I say unfortunate?) lover to an insect she wants to pull all the legs off of. Seriously?

Returning to music, there's Coolea, O Seasons' most beautiful song, with it's combination of her slow, swooping voice, an ensemble of violins providing a gorgeous interlude and a very sweet sadness.

Problems with pacing arise hereabouts, as the next thing you know, Destiny's Darling kicks off, a jaunty and very Irish pop tune. The lyric is saved from its almost cloying good cheer by the passage which goes "I love you/don't know what it means but I mean it... I love you/don't know what it says but it's said now," giving back the emotional complexity which defines this record.

Next is another, more successful spoken word entry, Waiting for You to Smile. This time the lover is deeply depressed and there's enough going on in the piece that it's worth re-listening to. Also, her recitation is in the deeply mannered style of some of Donovan's sung-spoke outings, and there's also some background textures to add interest.

Paris is the fractured account of the final hour of a suicidal woman and Katell sings every line as if it's being pulled from her heart. The opening guitar passage and her hushed introduction gives me chills every time. Harrowing.

O Seasons is next. The title was coined by French poet Arthur Rimbaud: "O Saisons, O Chateaux." It's a refutation of the hopelessness of Paris, a swift ode to autumn, to the eccentrics she's known, to folly and to life itself. "Preach, preacher, preach/do you want to be/in the warm fields of fall/where the everyday awaits?/I've laid out the table/washed the fruit in the sink/with the fox and the fool/I am cartwheeling on the brink."

O Iesu Mawr is an astonishing work in Welsh. Overlaid vocals become polyphony. It turns these final segments of the album into a spiritual work.

The Gulf of Araby, which Natalie Merchant covered, is the seven minute finale, wherein Katell sits down alone with her guitar and delivers perhaps the most delicate and moving of all O Seasons' songs. I can't pretend to know what it's all about, though regret hangs over every line of it and passages linger like poetry.

What it comes down to is 55 minutes of some of the best folk-rock to grace the 90s. When it does falter, it's perfectly forgivable considering the successes this CD contains. Try it. She's worth looking for.