Two records without any self-penned songs; one folky, one contemporary; one group, one solo singer; one very Scottish, one more English, though including a lot of American songs. North Sea Gas have been playing for many years, with at least half a dozen albums to their name. They are a four piece with lots of acoustic guitars and other stringed instruments and a very strong vocal front. Three of the four members take lead vocals on this album and all four do harmonies. North Sea Gas is a group in the Dubliners tradition, focusing on the songs, there is just one instrumental among the 14 tracks here, with the vocals in the front of the mix. The instruments provide backing for the vocals, with the chords plucked or strummed with a fiddle or a harmonica sometimes playing a harmony to the melody line. As you can guess there are plenty of vocal harmonies as well. The repertoire is a mixture of the very well known, (Ron Hynes’s “Sonny’s Dream” and Dougie MacLean’s “Caledonia”) to lesser known traditional songs like “Bonnie Bessie Logan.”

To me the best songs come first and last. “All God’s Creatures” by Bill Staines is a very lively opener with a lovely melodic twist in the end of the chorus. North Sea Gas gives the song a powerful drive and it is performed with lots of enthusiasm. The closing track is a beautiful version of Robert Burns’“Auld Lang Syne”. North Sea Gas have the good taste to use the original tune for the song to which they have put an inventive chord sequence; the chorus of the popular version is used as a coda. They slowly build the melody up and add instruments and harmonies as they go along.

Apart from that last track I think North Sea Gas are at their best when they play louder and more up tempo songs, like the opener and G Menzies’s “Kishorn Commandos.” To my ear they do not quite succeed with the slower songs, though all harmonies and the playing is spot on. And the choice of material is a bit puzzling. Which listener are they aiming for? If the ambition is to reach new people then I can see the sense in including things like “Loch Lomond” and “Caledonia;” if they are aiming at the folkies then songs like that ought to be left aside, since they do not really add anything new to them. “Auld Lang Syne” really shows they have the ability to take a much sung and much recorded song and give it a re-birth. File under “pleasant listening.”

John Wright has chosen ten love songs by different writers for his new album. He has aimed for lesser-known songs, and I admit I had only heard one of them before I got this record. When I reviewed Wright’s CD with traditional songs a couple of years ago I remarked that there were hardly any up-tempo songs at all on it. This goes for the new album as well. The closest things he comes to rock is John Berry’s “Your Love Amazes Me,” with some heavy guitar chords borrowed from an old Jackson Browne song. But apart from that song everything is performed very intimately, which suits Wright’s rather high-pitched and very sensitive voice very well.

Wright uses a small backing band, with Maartin Allcock playing guitars, bass and keyboards on all tracks, Chris Leslie on violin, mandolin and Native American flutes on most of them and Lee Thurston providing percussion and Barbara Benbow harmony vocals on a few. The selection of songs is impeccable. Wright has founds ten gems by writers such as Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joan Armatrading. Apart from the above mentioned track my favourites include “Armed with a Broken Heart” by John Gurka and “Summer Lightning” by Ralph McTell. The former is a plea about not doing anything to make amends, “Don’t do many any favours / Don’t try to ease the pain,” and the latter a very soft summer song. My favourite moment on the album is when Leslie takes out his flutes to give Jimmy LaFave’s “Never a Moment” a haunting feeling.

It is an album that grows on you, but you have to give it time. It does not thrust itself upon you, you have to seek it out and listen carefully. But it is well worth the effort.