The recording process for this debut album was an particularly troubled one because Essex- born Gemma Ray suffered from a mystery illness for nearly two years. This meant long periods of enforced solitude with hallucinations from prescribed drugs - causing her to call these recordings 'the sick sessions'.
There's a noirish undercurrent to the 13 songs although she relies more on evoking an American Gothic mood with cinematic imagery rather than wailing confessional blues.
She describes the resultant material as "futuristic vs. Fifties and Sixties’ mini-melodramas with blues, soul and gospel freak-outs".
This range of influences is both a strength and a weakness. It makes for a varied selection of songs but also a collection which lacks consistent focus. On tracks like Pick-Up Truck, New Life and the title track the stress on moody atmospherics sounds more forced and are not enough to rescue these mediocre songs.
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She's at her best when she combines vivid metaphors with tight pop songs. For example, tales of relationships running off course onto the 'Hard Shoulder' or parched in a 'Dry River' are images that work really well .
Another great track is the single, Rise of the Runts, set in a Pembrokeshire UFO hotspot where people gather to speak of strange bright lights and speculate as to whether a meteor fell or not and where the repeated line "Every one of us can write our name in the sand and walk away" suggests a concurrent mood of togetherness and loneliness.
Not as epic an album as it strives to be but it is by any standards a highly impressive debut and yet another name to add to the growing list of British female talent. There must be something in the water.
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