Andi Neate - Crows, Rooks And Ravens

(March 2009) 15 tracks: Too Busy Playing God * Rocketship * Tails From The Circus * Home * Headlights * Storybookman * Witch's Cat * Storm Crow * Come Back Home * Daisy Chain * Railway Town * Surprise (Love As If) * Shine.

It is hard to pigeon-hole Scottish singer/songwriter Andi Neate's style, but it has won her fans at music festivals in the UK and overseas. She is an expressive performer with a gift for melody, memorable hooks and delightfully offbeat lyrics. Her voice ranges from powerhouse to wistful sweetness, and her music draws from folk, rock, jazz and gospel.

Crows, rooks and ravens have long been associated with myths, fables and folk tales. They are symbols of dark goddesses including the Valkyries of Norse legends and the Irish Morrigan. They are contradictory – symbols of death but also of hope – and enigmatic – they are travellers and keepers of secrets.

The songs on Andi Neate's fifth album tell a traveller's tales of endings and beginnings, journeys and homecomings. There are songs about circuses and rocketships, night driving and fairy tales, peopled with colourful characters – the lion tamer, the astronaut, Mr Romeo and Storybookman – sharply observed and lightly drawn, with an emotional honesty which makes them easy to connect with.

She has been described as 'angel-voiced' and 'street tough', and compared with Suzanne Vega, Ani Difranco and the Cranberries.



Andi was one of the winners of Burnsong Gathering 2007, the national competition to find and promote the best new songwriting talent in Scotland. The song which won her that place – Home – is one of the new studio recordings on this CD, and eloquently expresses the bitter-sweet contradictions of the place you come from.

With Robert McFall, David Milligan and Colin Steele.