Still waters run deep, or so the saying goes, and MaryLeigh Roohan shows that she can swim against the current of self-obsession with her album “Skin & Bone”.
On the surface, this album seems like standard sensitive singer songwriter fodder but you don’t have to dig too deep before the inside becomes the outside. The outwardly countrified wrapping Ms Roohan places, for example, around “Coward” is more than enough to give her song a home in a pickup truck but her words, on closer examination, are more an urban take on the myths of all matters romantic. “My Surrender” would count as the redemption song on anyone else’s album but here it seems devotional almost to the point where those prone to self-analysis might consider it a hymn.
Even when Ms Roohan roughs it up, as in “Get Me Home” the passion she describes seems more likely to take her to the river than the bedroom. “Birth of a Cynic” is a clear indicator that a sharp mind is at work with her words “…I’d give anything for ignorant bliss” bleakly reinforcing the, now commonly held, viewpoint that happiness could never occupy the same church pew as awareness. MaryLeigh Roohan goes far deeper than you might reasonably expect of a singer songwriter these days.
If you have ever felt that you were drowning then you will find that there is much to savour here for, in her own way, MaryLeigh Roohan has made “Skin & Bone” into an album that is both spiritual and intelligent.
Available from Bandcamp.