Liane Carroll - Seaside - The Guardian

The perhaps unpromising idea of this casually expressive, unblinkingly honest, and often charmingly autobiographical album by the superb British standards-and-ballads singer Liane Carroll came from fellow-singer Joe Stilgoe - who wrote its confiding title track, and gave Carroll the theme of the seaside locations she has loved all her life and suspects plenty of others have a special place for too. Carroll and some fine partners deliver 10 seaborne songs here, with the vocalist's regular production guru James McMillan enriching the settings at every turn. The sentimentality in Stilgoe's theme song gets a revealing wistfulness in Carroll's interpretation, the bouncy old Morecambe and Wise sign-off Bring Me Sunshine becomes a soulful and barely moving expression of hope, Page and Plant's Nobody's Fault But Mine is a slow blues strut for an imperious Carroll and Julian Siegel's tenor sax, the jazz classic I Cover the Waterfront is a gleaming duet for Luft's guitar and Carroll in Billie Holiday mood, and the unlikely finale on For Those in Peril on the Sea is a steadily respectful incantation. Only Carroll could make an album like this one.