The Elm Wood

South Armagh-based singer/songwriter Briege Murphy has a strong, resonant voice and a great way with words. ‘Colorado Cowboy’, with its melodic tip of the hat to ‘The Streets Of Laredo’, and ‘The Hired Girl’ both look back to an earlier era when poverty dictated a choice between emigration and the hiring fair, while ‘The Ring Of Gullion’ mourns the imposition of watchtowers and whirring helicopters on the writer’s native landscape. Johnny Scott’s production is a tad overlush for my taste, although he hits a perfectly cheesy note on the hilarious ‘Saving Up To Be Famous’, a tongue-in-cheek paean to cosmetic surgery. Happily, the stunning final track is left a cappella: entitled ‘One Down The Road’, it deserves immortality as a protest anthem par excellence.