Gown ★★★★

(POSEIDON)

Jo Hamilton had a nomadic childhood, living in six countries across Europe and Asia, ranging from near isolation in the Scottish Highlands to as far afield as Cambodia, to where she later returned, making recordings that eventually worked their way into songs now on Gown. This album is a similar journey; crammed with the multitude of global influences she has gathered along the way. Beautifully packaged, Dave Neale’s artwork alone warrants an in-hand purchase over a download, completed by the inner sleeve’s stunning photography of bracken, that much overlooked blanket of English woodland.

During the journey, Hamilton returns to her Scottish origins with two of the album’s best tracks, the powerful ‘Liathach’ and ‘Think Of Me’, which begins as a tender greeting and builds to an uninhibited, celebratory, homecoming cry.

Jo Hamilton will inevitably draw comparisons with artists like Kate Bush in that her work is just so fearlessly unique. Gown is a remarkable album; heady and addictive. There are programmed sequences, sampled voices and atmospheres; beautiful classical-guitar that opens ‘There It Is’; vast, soaring vocals; building strings. The sleeve notes credit David Picking for drums, wineglasses and Brazil nuts. What’s not to like?