(Indie, Pop Rock, Folk) Mama Kin - The Magician's Daughter - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

Mama Kin’s second album, The Magician’s Daughter, while only 10 tracks long, is, quite simply, a fantastic album, and a huge creative leap forward for the band.
Speaking to RawInk magazine, she described it as “…a kind of broadening and deepening from Beat and Holler“. “I’m really excited that I have made an album that is so different from my last album,” she said, “because I feel like if there was going to be a box for me I’ve broken it. My theme for this album is around alchemy, energy and connection.”
With connection and energy at the forefront of her creative design, Mama Kin and her band have more than delivered, especially with the over-all dynamic of each of the tracks. Danielle Caruana’s vocal has excelled itself, showing a much richer range and reach, with a subtle control of tone and nuance that drives the album to a new sonic dimension. With the band’s intricately versatile arrangement and production seemingly built around her, (and a rhythm section worth swooning over), her vocal has many opportunities to soar and dip. Sometimes she is tremulous and gentle, sometimes sultry and powerful and always passionate, all elements melding to create a sound that is sweet, diverse, intriguing and very much alive.
While “Was it Worth it” was released as a single and displays a lot of drive and pace for the album, one of the tracks that truly stands out for me is “Bosom of our Bed”; A tale of lovers, of a woman comforting her man (I love the role reversal here) in the security and sanctity of their bed – a slightly mournful but desperately loving song. The instrumentation is paired back and lilting, a showcase for the velvet and smoke of Danielle’s voice, her vibrato filled with a late night/early morning ambience, the tidal twang of the electric guitar sitting with the piano, softly rolling along to it’s gentle end.
Each track is different and brilliant, drawing from a heady mix of the swagger and waltz of sixties balladry (complete with a Rhodes) in “Rescue,” the deliciously sharp and forthright roots sounds of “Give me A reason”, the beauty and strength of our environment, the way nature reflects our emotions, and how we take into our emotions this wildness (“Redwood River”, “The River As she Runs”) and the bitterness of loss, in sad lament, “Cherokee Boy” – a combination that is incredibly rich in imagery, intensity and aural pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed The Magician’s Daughter, and am very excited to see how Caruana and her band reproduce their impeccable and impressive sound in a live setting.