If you have had your fill of manufactured pop, where style overcomes substance, then this CD is for you. Although only comprising of 7 tracks, I guarantee that you will be humming at least 3 of them after your first hearing, that after a second hearing you'll start humming along & joining in the chorus to Over and that the guitar playing on Magnet will take you back to the first time you realised that music was more than a background hum. Pretend stands out as a haunting ballad of betrayal and unhappiness, whilst the absolutely wonderful Soap Opera is easily in my top 25 tunes of all time. You *won't* be disappointed.

So around St. Patrick’s Day this year, Alys calls me to tell me that she has booked some studio time to make a demo, just for her solo stuff. I think its great and promise to stop by there to document this for this site I was planning to do on her and possibly to take some photos aswell. I got distracted with this and that and turning my life upside down, an occurence that happens every six months or so. I try and get her down to the festival on the South Bank put on by the mayor on the Sunday to see ‘Sinead Quinn’ and ‘Sharon Shannon’ and when she tells me she can’t make it, I knew that what she was cooking up was to be something special. So I have been looking forward to writing this for some time, I first heard Alys play solo when I came to London, bar a couple of times at her place when we both lived in Middlesbrough. We had already had a taster of these recordings as did the rest of the country when the first track ‘Pretend’ turns up on a CD called ‘Beautiful Day’ in May, free with The Daily Mirror one Saturday (and later again in The Sunday People in August). Alys had no idea. I called her to congratulate her and scold her for forgetting to tell me and instead I was met with a screaming ecstatic little Irish girl on the other end of the line. It’s a simplistic opener, a tale of a past love that has moved on and releif in the hearts and minds of both parties.("I won’t pretend our love is true...") and recanting of happier times mixed with the singers somewhat trademark self-doubt ("seen the pictures of how happy you were") whilst ‘Over’ is a more jovial rendition of what happens next. This is a beautiful DeFranco-esque strum and jam that makes you feel warm inside as you cruise in your open top VW Beetle down the highway of your choosing, with just the slightest cheeky nod towards the MOR ‘Theme to The Littlest Hobo’. I dare you not to resist whistling this tune days later. ("I asked if you’re OK and then I turn away/Cause the answers not the reason why I asked her/I am getting over you at last") ‘From her Knees’ is an eiree little piece suited to a gothic film score like ‘Donnie Darko’ or ‘pi’ but just demonstrates how versatile Alys can be. The haunting wail and chilling riff is almost reminiscent to ‘Where is my mind?’ but saves it with her hurt Irish innocence in the vocals. She seems trapped and forced to haunt us in her repentence for whatever her sins were. ("I’m leaving you/I’m leaving you") Started life off as a funky jam to rock the crowd in the 12bar Club, in late 2002, ‘The One’ has turned into a magnificent stomper of a song and is the defininate highlight for me. I guess it was something I could relate to. It’s all about moving onto a new relationship and at the start when it’s still fun and keeping that magic going, deciding that perhaps commitment is right for this time. ("Standing on the shore/Think I’m yearning/I think you’re The One) It’s also a great love song ("You call out my name/I hear it in my heart") and the backing vocals are very creative and just pleasing on the lug holes. "Soap Opera" and "Magnet" are both great songs. The latter is beautiful. It has heart, passion, sublim lyrics, tears and joy and with the addition of the right amount of studio time and some orchestra, will hopefully be in the charts one day. I would have preferred to hear ‘Appreciate This’ in the place of ‘Soap Opera’ a much better song and would have sounded a lot better after ‘Magnet’ but the song we do have still brims with confidence and exuberance. ‘Stop, Look, Listen’ is tinged with a little bit of genius. It’s so refreshing to discover an artist with some ingenuity enough to create something that isn’t designed to cater for some market or mimick the current watered down cover versions or wanky coffee shop jazz artistes. This is a tale of chat she has with a homeless man she meets outside a North London tube Station (Finsbury Park, I suspect). The light riff and celtic vocals are tinged with enough sadness to make you dig deep into your pocket and some excellent vocal effects at the same time. It brims with style and individuality. An altogether great first effort and definitive lesson in acoustic simplicity. Fair play to Alys for tackling, Guitars, Bass and Drums and a nod to Alison Beckett (Clarinet) and Christine Lehmann (Violin). This is a great contemporary solo debut that a hundred American female guitarists with multi-million dollar record contracts would shave their heads and smoke cigars for.