The very first track gave me goose bumps. I hear the mountains, the sea, and the air in the eternal feeling of these songs. Alli Collis has a voice that sounds wise and poetic, and her guitar playing is rich and warm. As she sings of her travels and dreams, it sounds like someone gave Mother Nature a guitar and let her roam. I couldn’t help myself. As the first couple of tracks played, I got up, lit some scented candles, and dimmed the lights before sitting down to take notes. It amazes me that Collis taught herself guitar. The complexity of the tumbling notes sounds like she’s playing five guitars at once. But still, it’s quiet, contemplative, controlled. The passion and intensity comes from that voice. She breathes, gasps, yodels, growls, and cries to the heavens. Her voice has majesty in it. Joni Mitchell would swoon. She has a gift for lyrics, too, which rounds out her talents to make her the perfect singer/songwriter. “Power is what you will it, disguise is sensuous anonymity,” sings a tree being torn apart by the elements. In “Sea Storm,” inspired by her travels through Africa, Collis sings, “When I’m frightened, I wish on a zebra stripe.” She sings of swimming with rainbow trout, keeping a lifelong friendship alive, and looking into the souls of strangers. She knows where every soul lives and breathes. “I want to play ferociously into the night,” she insists in the title track. I’m certainly not stopping her.

This is ruminative acoustic folk music: dark, intense, and musically and lyrically accomplished. Alli Collis's guitar picking may bear echoes of Jorma and Mississippi John Hurt, but whatever her inspirations may be, she has fused them into a melancholy style of her own. She's also a fearless vocalist, with an aching alto that wrenches maximum feeling from each line. Collis's lyrics are both descriptive and evocative, inspired by experience, world travel and the cycles of life, emotional but never sentimental.

Alli come through again with an album of both stirring emotional lyrics and intricate guitar. Love it....only one problem though....after only 3 days of enjoying my new cd my roomate has swiped it and claimed it as her own. ***sigh*** A warning to all who plan to purchase this album, it is swipe worthy and must be coveted and protected at all costs. your best bet is to purchase multuple copies to be safe. ***good luck and enjoy!****