McGrath sounds like the new queen of country pop on her sparkling debut
With Taylor Swift having long forsaken country for a weird brand of Stepford dance pop and with a whole new crop of country acts being hugged to the double denim hearts of a younger generation, the time seems right for Rostrevor native Catherine McGrath.
Talk of The Town is her immaculately produced debut and it boasts crisp musicianship with a distinctive country trill of a voice that shifts through the emotional gears like a Grand Ole Opry veteran.
Watch our interview with Catherine McGrath
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Recorded in Nashville and London with producers and co-writers who’ve worked with Keith Urban, Swift, and Hunter Hayes, country music themes of heartache dominate. McGrath has songwriting nous well beyond her 21 years and when she sings "I don’t know what hurts the worse - me alone or you with her" on I Thought It Was Gonna be Me, it’s as good a country couplet as you’ll hear this year.
She gets autobiographical on Wild (a true story of an unreciprocated love at a Coldplay concert), a track that articulates the pain of young love with genuine feeling, while The Edges is buoyed along on banjo, one of many nods to McGrath’s musical family background and country music’s Irish folk lineage.
Elsewhere, she pairs up with Hunter Hayes on Don’t Let Me Forget while the breathy dramatics of Enough for You hangs on a great pop hook
This is a fresh-sounding debut rooted in tradition but with a keen eye on the modern. The title track is a glossy feelgood song about her dreams of making it in music business; you'd be mad to get against that happening.
Alan Corr @corralan
