Label: Maison Alas Recordings

Producer: Maria Daines and Paul Killington

Release Date: 2005

I love it when a fellow Brit emerges onto the scene with a refreshingly brilliant album and Maria and Paul have done just that on so many levels that it's actually quite laughingly astonishing! What Paul's stunning musicianship and production do to this classic album is beyond words really but then Maria's eye-widening and intuitively passionate vocals are what provides the necessary balance for an award winning soulful performance.

The album opens up with the unmercifully amazing Ain't Nobody - an Aretha-esque adventure into the land of the heart and soul enriching audio realm where few vocalists of the same standard are adorned with praise and appreciation. Beautifully expressed vocals and stunning bass and guitar work are so well complimenting that you're hit on a whole load of emotional levels in a kinda state of awe! One Good Man delivers mesmerizing vocals and guitar work that is the stuff of the greats and I do mean the 'true' greats darlings! Wouldn't you love to live next door to Maria and Paul just to have the pleasure of being kept awake by the reherasals and recordings going on in that house? Yep... told yaaa!

The dreamy guitar riffs that open up the rather unforgivingly lovely Bring Your Love Along have obviously been imported from the other half of the sky... and the part where the sun is just happens to be in the hands of Maria's stunning vocals for this incredible masterpiece in songwriting. If the record industry hasn't woken up to this amazing artist yet... then the medication they have taken must be absolutely lethal!

Brandy Queen is the kind of Janis/Tina song my Aunty Mary would have given up a whole carton of Embassy Mild and three crates of Guiness for! Very clever vocals and lyrics are married in such a way that firmly establishes Maria as one of the Best British Female Vocalists of our current times. The versalitity and style meanderings that occur in this song are rather amazing to say the least.. I'm already getting the impression that Maria's TV license and Council Tax must be provided free of charge as a token of national appreciation! But then we arrive at Tear Down the Walls which is, without a doubt, one of the finest examples of rock and roll that I have heard come out of England in many many years! Startling vocals and fantasticly meandered fretboard work make this song a real classic and Maria and Paul should truly be walking on air having their names assigned to the responsibility for this song! What an intensely amazing live performance these guys would have us enduring!

Til I Feel Better is the song that almost had me booking a flight back to the UK just to say hello! mesmerizing and soulfully enchanting vocals are of the kind that pierces all the right places at once. Again, we are reminiscing on what made Tina Turner and Janis Joplin and Patti Labelle and Millie Jackson divas of their time cos it's just happened here to Maria. There's no doubt that we are indeed not only feeling 'treated' to something wonderful here... but you feel rather 'blessed' at simply having the opportunity to listen. It's that good folks... get your credit/debit card ready and tell British Telecom they're gonna have to wait!

Pack-a-Punch-Mama is what my partner Elley Wilson describes as 'pure unadulaterated head bliss for the soul!' with it's country connotations and communions that leave you suitably impressed and in no doubt of Maria's vocal range and prowess. The guitar playing is incredible and at this point I'm gonna ask Paul to send me a guitar pick of his to hang on the R Cat office wall that I can have blessed to ward off evil!

Wicked Eyed Mule delivers that delightfully clever Stevie Nicks/John Martyn style vocal right into the heart of your lap, then your chest, then deep into your soul! After the first minute, the piano arrives to pack in the prizes besides the guitars and you feel like you're in a kinda 'Music R Us' Superstore without the security guys and a huge shopping trolley full of Maria Daines songs!

Too Bad Henry meanwhile, is perhaps one of the best female-fronted rock songs I have heard in decades! The production is superb (as it has been throughout the album) and the arrangement is stunning. Lyrically, the elements of wit and sracasm work brilliantly and you realise that the scale you set earlier for good ol classic rock has just been extended! You Don't Love Me follows your complete and utter disbelief from the previous vocal performance with some even more meaningful disbelief in the truly classy vocal performance here. 'You don't love me' is a beautiful and passionately delivered song filled with a heightened sense of realism that we can all relate to.

We revist 'Henry' in Henry's Mother and again we are treated to some very clever songwriting with the kind of arrangement some of the world's best producers must dream of working with.. the thing is.. they'd have to at least equal or surpass Maria and Paul's production here and I honestly can't see that happening can you? It takes some doing to get vocals this well recorded and they've done it perfectly. Brilliant!

You Ain't the Pickety Po takes us back to the kind of vocals that classic female artists build careers upon. I really do hate comparing cos it's silly really when you're this good a singer but you'll find hints of Buffy Sainte Marie, Cher (at her best), and Janis Joplin to name a few. If you let go of the comparisons however, you get Maria Daines at her throat engaging best. A consummate artist with a magnificent arrangement and startling production all over again!

Number 13 is the final track on the album and I really do wish it wasn't. You see... magical performances are drug-like.. once you get the first few fixes...it's a long time before you can be truly rehabilitated. With this song... with these fine vocals over such a superb song.. you don't wanna be rescued or de-sensitized from anything. You just want more and more and..

Maria Daines and Paul Killington are without a doubt, two of the finest musical virtuosos ever to have mastered their craft in England, packaged it up, and made it possible for us to share in many many years. Treebone is an important album in many respects... buying the album should be made mandatory and, for Her Majesty's Government, Maria and Paul are assets that should be given their TV Licenses and Council Tax vouchers free for life at the very least simply for making such wonderful music possible.

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