ALBUM REVIEW: Cavalier, Eddi Reader - Face of alternative pop-folk learns to do it her way after 40 years
Three BRIT awards, an MBE and a host of honorary doctorates has given celebrated Scottish singer Eddi Reader the right to set her own musical course.
Cavalier is the 11th solo album by the one-time lead singer of Fairground Attraction who split acrimoniously just two years after "Perfect" reached number one in the UK charts in May 1988.
A celebration of Ms Reader's four decades in the music industry, Cavalier is a 16- tracks, near hour-long journey through the Glasgow-born mum-of-two's evolution from potential teenage punk rebel and naive busker to worldly wise folk sage and unofficial champion of the works by Scotland's bard, Robert
Burns.
Burns.
Ms Reader said: "I used to be a geek about music, knowing everything about every singer.
"But I feel much more like the audience now in that I'm interested in the effect that music has on people.
"I remember back in the 1970s when I could out-music any of the guys in the pub.
"I could out-sing them, out-drink them and out-smoke them.
"But I remember feeling quite unsafe, with my shoes and socks off, with a guitar and a bunch of hippies around me.
"So I made myself safe by going around with safe people and people who were good to me.
"I didn't think for one minute that it was unusual to be a musician, but I was just the result of the generation before me who were trying hard to buck any kind of convention towards families in society.
"But when I realised the size of the mountain we were climbing then, I was oblivious to it because I was being carried along by the changing society around me."
Cavalier ranges from two pacey numbers,"Wonderful and Cavalier", examples of what might have been had Fairground Attraction ran its full course, to the more folk-inclined "Meg O' The Glen, There's a Hole in the Desert and Pangur Ban and the Primrose Lass".
But Ms Reader shows the singing icon she has become best with the dementia-themed "My Favourite Dress, Maid 'O' The Loch and, especially, the divine, spine-tingling "Deirdre's Farewell to Scotland".
She said: "Cavalier come out of a time when a lot of people from my family were leaving this world.
"One of them collected music and when we had to clear the house in Dublin where they lived, we found these beautiful music sheets from 1936.
"In this collection of material, I found that there was so much gold that I added into the music I already had.
"But then I felt that I had a duty to let people know how beautiful it was and the fact that they own it.
"My Favourite Dress is a response to the fact that no one wants to tackle dementia and losing our mothers and fathers to this place they get to that we call bewilderment.
"I'm hoping that My Favourite Dress has its life because recording songs is about giving something life that doesn't depend on you, the singer."
Several songs on the album, including Meg O' The Glen, A Sailor's Farewell to the Sea, Pangur Ban and the Primrose Lass and My Favourite Dress, were tried out on an audience at St George's Guildhall during the King's Lynn Festival in July.
With her descriptive and precise voice competing with torrential rain, thunder and lightning, Ms Reader took her audience on a two-hour tour through her enduring career as a recording artist.
She said: "It was a special night for me to play with the boys (accordian player Alan Kelly, double bassist Kevin Maguire and guitarists Boo Hewerdine and husband John Douglas) after being away from each other for a while.
"The whole environment was amazing and I had no idea that we were playing under the hull of a boat.
"King's Lynn was the most special gig I've played in a long time, with an almost biblical deluge while were in a venue that reminded me of Noah's Ark making it feel really ecclesiastical."
Next for Ms Reader is a tour of Ireland with the Alan Kelly Gang before an eight-date tour of England in October.
She said: "Generally, there are songs that you know so you don't rehearse those too much which stops me from being nervous.
"It also allows me to focus solely on just being in the moment with my music and communicating in that way with the audience.
"If you think of it as delivering a letter, you're not responsible for the way the letter is received.
"So I'm crossing my fingers that people will like Cavalier because this is my 40th anniversary year in music and, hopefully, it will lead to more concerts and more albums."
Eddi Reader only knows one way how to sing, from the heart.
Winston Brown
