Bedlam

Kelly Oliver is a musician growing in ambition and confidence. Her first album This Land was very much a solo affair. Bedlam features several other musicians, widening the range of her sound beyond guitar and mouth-organ, incorporating bass, percussion, fiddle and accordion. She has also opted to work not with a single producer, but three. Nonetheless, her musicality and, particularly, her lyrics, stamp this album as her own.

The title-track is written from the point of view of a young woman who, having been deemed a danger to her new-born daughter, ends up in the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London. This was the original Bedlam asylum, to which well-to-do people flocked in order to be amused by the ‘antics’ of the inmates. The power of Kelly Oliver's song lies its intimation of that social situation, which can render a mother powerless, hasn’t changed much even today.

Another strong song is ‘The Other Woman’, in which a woman in love with a married man expresses her unhappiness, yet relishes the drama of the role she has chosen. This delicate ambiguity is expressed musically in Oliver's guitar playing, wavering between major and minor. There is joy, too, in ‘Rio’, closing the album with an upbeat almost-pop song that is a portrait of that vibrant city.