If you can get over the fact Nell Bryden is proud and staggeringly oblivious to the moral minefield of her recent trip to entertain US troops in Iraq, Second Time Around isn’t half bad.

From bar room blues and country rock to jazz and southern soul, the versatile, vocally gifted New York-based singer-songwriter has written a batch of songs that sound like long-loved Dixie standards. “It’s the kind of town where your first love is your last”, Bryden laments on ‘Only Life I Know’, a poignant story-song about a downtrodden red bird that strongly echoes Marianne Faithfull’s ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’.

While the rambunctious title track does a good job of sounding like an outtake from Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, most of the numbers are slower, lonesome ballads detailing broken relationships. This is a promising and professional debut. Bryden, though, has a long way to go before she is referred to alongside legendary southern belles Lucinda Williams and Shelby Lynne.

Ian Sinclair