Timbre

Part of the first wave of feisty, in-your-face 1990s women singer songwriters that also included Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow and Meredith Brooks, the openly lesbian Sophie Ballantyne Hawkins struck gold with the affecting hit, ‘Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover’. Her debut album Tongues And Tails was full of similarly observed vignettes of life, love and lust, but its disappointing follow-up Whale saw her disappear almost as quickly as she’d emerged. On her third album, the self-produced Timbre (first released in 1999 and presented here in extended format) she made a spectacular return to form with raunchy, sensuous numbers like ‘Bare The Weight Of Me’, ‘Your Tongue Like The Sun In My Mouth’ and ‘Mmm My Best Friend’.

Musically, Hawkins balances a confident rock-chick sensibility with strong folk elements. Lyrically however she pulls no punches and the raw, sexual honesty of lines like, “I’ll take your tongue down my throat” and “I want your breasts on my back”, mark her out as a true original. Elsewhere the sheer melodic quality and lyrical maturity of songs like ‘Lose Your Way’ and ‘32 Lines’ make this album her best yet.

Included on this nicely packaged re-release (mixed and engineered incidentally by acclaimed Dublin studio wiz Kevin Killen) is an extra disc with two new songs, home demos, re-mixes and enhanced videos.