Trish Murphy: Captured

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * *)


Murphy is from Houston and somehow, in the local fascination with Texas singer-songwriters, she seems to have slipped right past us. This belatedly released live album is worth checking out because there are strong suggestions she'll tour. Let's hope so, because these stripped-bare songs show her to be an assured singer with a honey-voice covering a careworn heart.

She writes memorable songs drawn from newspaper clippings (the funny narrative of childhood rebellion in The Trouble with Trouble), about lost love (the Lucinda Williams-like Can We be Friends Again, Lightning Strikes). When she sings of shooting stop signs you believe her, just as you do when she's lamenting being abandoned by a lover. Tells a good story to her audience, too.

Label: Southbound