Last year singer/songwriter Maryen Cairns released volume one of her live album, and now she is back with the second. At the end of Maryen’s 2023 UK tour, she went into Echotown Studios with her mentor, legendary Rolling Stones producer Chris Kimsey, and over the next 48 hours played 30 songs to a small audience whilst Chris captured the sound with an array of microphones. Often, Maryen would sit on a cajón and pivot between guitar and piano, recreating what took place on her one-woman show, and this release captures another ten songs from that set. Maryen has always had a wonderfully clear style, and I still love her vocals more than 30 years on from when I first heard them and there is no doubt she loves being in this element where she has total control.
She is a wonderful storyteller (her 2016 album, ‘Femina Australis’, is an incredible way to find out about some of the most important Aussie women) and I find myself repeatedly drawn to one of the last songs on the album, “The Wreck of the Georgette”, a tale of a Western Australian steamship going down in 1876. The first verse is sung a capella with just some percussion, allowing us to be drawn inside the story and the tragedy of what happened. I did some research on this as the story is so poignant, learning that for his part in saving so many people by repeatedly riding his horse into the waves that Sam Isaacs was granted 40 hectares (100 acres) of land, becoming the first Aboriginal person to receive a land grant in Western Australia.
Maryen has multiple styles, soft and dreamy, drifting along while at others she is more vibrant, but always her vocals are front and centre as there is nowhere to hide so we get taken in by her words, in a very intimate and beguiling setting. Yet another sheer delight as Maryen sings just to us, one on one.
Rating: 8/10