Margaret Healy - .and you are?

Medical - 2001 - 48 minutes

Dig past the bad cover and Healy's debut has quite a few bedroom styled treasures waiting to be discovered. With a lightness of touch she moves through the highs and lows of urban life and love, never overstating the arrangements and always sounding totally comfortable with the beats and effects whirring around her.

At times the similarity of pace across the eleven songs makes your attention wander but on the likes of 'Eye of the Beholder', 'Call it a Moment' (a team up with Renaissance man Nitin Sawhney) and 'Coming Home' (with the great lyric "Heaven's Gate is James' Street"), the Dubliner reels you in with a voice which suggests that lovers of Stina Nordenstam need look no further than their own backyard.

Overlong, but a promising debut.

Harry Guerin

Tracklisting: Something Real - This is Your Star - Sound of the Rain - Coming Home - Never Never Land - Count to Ten - Takin it Back - Eye of the Beholder - Gentle - Call it a Moment - Held by Strangers.