MARTHA L HEALY - Better Days

In the last issue we introduced you to Glasgow singer songwriter MARTHA L HEALY, with her Acoustic EP. Well, she launched her full Nashville recorded CD “Better Days” at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry on St. Andrews Night, and what a superb album it is.

The title track kicks it all off with some lovely Cajun accordion. It’s a good time uptempo fun song to get things started with.

“The Lovin’ Kind”, which follows, is a very interesting track. The intro has quite an “eastern” feel to it, but once into the song, Martha delivers a great vocal performance like one of the 60’s pop divas.

“Enough”, “13 Hours”, “House Of Love” and “Shame,Shame,Shame” are sensitive ballads which Martha proves she can handle as well as the fun infused “Too Much Vodka”, which comes from the pen of Wendy Newcomer.

“Burtonport” stands out for being different. The song digs into Martha’s Irish heritage, but also comes over with an old southern Texas feel to it. It’s about the village where Martha’s Nana grew up in Co. Donegal in Ireland. It's the story of how she passed on a strong sense of identity and roots down through the generations. A real personal song that really works.

Martha has a lot of soul in her voice, which she uses to best effect across the album. With simple musical arrangements, and boosted by Rory Hoffman’s  accordion, this is an exceptionally strong debut album.

As an advance to the album, Martha has the “Better Days EP (Unplugged) doing the rounds.   It features 5 tracks. There’s quite a variety of material, which really shows this little lady’s vocal talent .

“Enough” is a nice acoustic opener, whilst the closing track, “Healin’ Wind is even more simply arranged.  “Shame” is a strong painful ballad, made all the more effective by some neat harmonica. “13 Hours”, another ballad, has a strong Country feel to it.

But just to show her variety, Martha hits the bottle on ”Vodka”, a song written by Carrie Newcomer. There are several songs on the same theme, but Martha really delivers on this uptempo morning after post mortem. Great song, some really nice instrumentation, and really catchy.

I was really impressed with Martha’s vocal style. We’re gonna hear a lot more of her. 

You must give her a listen.

www,marthalhealy.com