Leanne Thorose, Bluestack Mountain Girl

LEANNE THOROSE
BLUESTACK MOUNTAIN GIRL
Lara Natural Music
LNM008

Thorose is an engaging singer and accomplished mandolin player. She also plays fiddle on an original waltz. She can deliver the most insipid lyric with conviction. On track eight we get “Keep My Head Above Water,” the first really strong lyric to go with the music that she wrote for each song. The opening track, “The Bluestack Mountain Range,” is one of the stronger cuts in this collection. Charlie Boston wrote the lyrics, and Thorose wrote the music for the songs and three instrumental cuts that features her mandolin or fiddle. She has a great sense of what makes for good bluegrass and the fact that she is from London, England, makes all of this worth mentioning.

The band is a group of handpicked bluegrass A-team session players including Bryan Sutton, Aubrey Haynie, Adam Steffey, Scott Vestal, Andy Leftwich, Mike Bub and Dennis Crouch, with Monty Allen providing vocal harmony and Thorose’s father, Cedric Thorose, adding some resonator guitar. As you might expect, the supporting cast is superb in their role and Thorose is a solid singer with an uncanny melodic sense in her writing and singing. The last two cuts on this project are “The Adara Collection,” which demonstrates her mandolin skills nicely, and the swinging “All I Need To Know,” which demonstrates some great vocal chops from Thorose. These two cuts go a long way to making this project a success. It would be great to hear her do a wider ranging program than just this original material. Her instrumental work is solid, as are her vocals. Hopefully we will be hearing more from this young lady in the future. (Lara Natural Music, 22A Ives St., Chelsea, London SW3 2ND, U.K., www.laramusic.co.uk.)RCB