This beautiful album from Marina Florance is completely satisfying. 13 songs and one tune long, Marina’s voice and songwriting is the golden source of Somewhere Down the Line. If you like sonorous singing, great songwriting and excellent production, this is an album for you. Gentle and peaceful in its entirety, it is a CD where repetitive playing only adds to its satisfaction.

Marina performs as a duo with Mick Kennedy, also a songwriter. The opening track is one of his. Nothing Could Have Prepared Me For You is intriguing in that we don’t know who you is – so, project your own meaning onto the song, and allow the voice and melody to take you away. This is a very special song.

Marina’s voice is evocative of Kate Wolf, a country singer-songwriter who was a major influence on the country scene in the 1980s. Can’t say quite why but Parallel Lines brought Kate Wolf’s voice to mind. Only sometimes though – Florance and Kennedy as a duo are quite unique in their songwriting and arrangements.

If anything, this album has an acoustic traditional English music feel to it. It’s the use of the concertina, violin and accordion that create this. Milenihum is only instrumental on the CD, and written by Florance. It is the least captivating only because the tune is played rather than sung. Had she hummed the tune, this instrumental would have been something else.

Somewhere Down the Line was produced with complete mastery by Chris Bullen at High Barn, Suffolk who championed the duo under the Arts Council Escalator project. There’s no doubt the production makes this album something special.

After listening to the CD, I went to hear them live. I was a little disappointed. Not in the voice, or the songwriting or in their own performance. It was that my expectation had been built up for a larger sound which is impossible for them to deliver as a duo.

Reproducing the CD sound live would require much investment in terms of resource – but it would be a good road to travel. It might be a challenge, but with this material and their potential they would rise to it easily.

www.marinaflorance.com

Writer: Anne L Ryan

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