It's been a busy year so far for Sorren Maclean: playing in a King Creosote offshoot, supporting Idlewild on tour, performing as part of the ensemble that brought Martyn Bennett's Grit to the live stage at Celtic Connections.
Now, with his debut album, it's time for this 25-year-old native of Mull to step into the spotlight as a singer-songwriter in his own right. In some of the melodies you can hear the ghost of what he brought as co-writer to Roddy Woomble's solo work, but Maclean has an emerging style of his own that feels like a natural part of the musical DNA of someone brought up off the Scottish mainland: a laidback, deceptively easy vocal that floats over more rhythmic and richly arranged undercurrents; a lyrical strain that returns again and again to ideas of leaving, travelling, coming home. There are more than a few perfectly formed songs among the nine here, each with lovely details of its own: the soft walls of harmony on Rows And Rows Of Boxes, the chorus picking up pace on Way Back Home, the release of ceilidh energy at the end of the title track where Hannah Fisher's fiddle again proves one of the secret weapons of Scottish indie-folk.
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