Astra "Where You Rest" (Isolation Recordings, 2009)

Brighton newcomer gets restful

Barely out of her teens, Brighton based singer-songwriter Astra Forward debuts on this 8 track album of sparsely arranged personal songs.

Astra has an attractive, sometimes snowflake-gentle, voice which throughout these 8 songs is backed simply by acoustic guitar, a sole lamenting viola and occasional piano motifs that can’t help but evoke a Nick Drake-alike mood of pastoral ruefulness and reflection.

Astra’s main lyrical concerns display an honesty and unguarded vulnerability as she wades through family strife, lost and longed-for love and everyday hopes and fears. Abi Fry (British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes) provides the welcome viola lines befitting much of the material here and lending an attractive, aching melancholy.

Contrasting some of the slightly more pedestrian moments that begin the album, the epic title-track mixes those dramatic strings to rousing effect, combining Astra’s most intriguing melodic turns into a tense pressure-cooker of longing, and it feels like we’ve stepped up a gear momentarily.

Elsewhere, there is some much needed colour and fire in ‘Angel’ with its slightly more sprightly mood and bolder thematic concerns (‘I’m no angel..I’ve only known him a week, but I’m still in his bed’).

While the style of what’s here is clearly Astra's preferred setting and she possesses a clear talent for these plaintive & introspective, folk-inspired musings, ‘Where You Rest’ suffers from being very much a mono-paced affair without enough stand-outs to shout above the purveying mood of the record. More from Astra will be welcome but on the evidence here, she only really displays to us that she has the one weapon in her arsenal.

Date review added:  Saturday, April 11, 2009
Reviewer:  Ian Fildes
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  Record Label website