Greta O'Leary: River Dark (digital outlets)

Let's be clear: this debut album by the local “spook-folk” singer-songwriter is not delivered up as an easy proposition.

It opens with three dreamy and melancholy songs – Baby I'm a Singer, The Greatest Peace I've Ever Known and Prelude, all previously released as singles – which certainly establish her distinctively high vocal style and the supportive accompaniment by the likes of Anita Clark (Motte), Callum Passells, Alastair Deverick and Cass Basil who elevate the material.

As standalone songs they work well enough, but running one into another makes for a prevailing same-same mood which isn't the most persuasive way to kick off an album, especially a debut.

Her most convincing early single was Baptised at the Desktop Computer – the seventh of the nine songs here – which shifted into different territory through beats and a driving pop sensibility.

It might have been useful to have this up earlier just to ameliorate the similarity which comes from the slow pace and her vocals in the first half here.

Her almost jaunty Sleep Alone and the genuinely eerie So Lucky – again coloured by the excellent musical settings – offer a better appreciation of her lyrical poetry and mood setting, and the title track recalls some of the best Anglofolk writers of the late Sixties and Seventies.

And with Good Girl right at the end she has the kind of spare song which could pull the attention back and down after one of the more (slightly) uptempo songs which have preceded it.

O'Leary has a vocal style which, at present, deliberately broadcasts on a specific bandwidth (“spook-folk”) and that, taken with the running order here, makes for an album which challenges more than it needed to.

A confident and well produced debut (by Jol Mulholland) and the flashes of her best here suggest this isn't the most impressive album she's going to make.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here