SKC SONGS

As a purveyor of sad songs written straight from a heart stuffed full of poetry, Sheil K Cameron has few competitors and “On Sanity’s Shore” is a compilation of her songs and her words joined together to make a musical statement that is likely more private than public.

And Sheila K Cameron has plenty of songs to pull from her past. The art is strong in her music, as it is in the words between her songs, and, despite her own predilection for intellectual reflection, there is something affecting about this album. I don’t doubt that all she portrays is personal in inspiration and, from a commercial point of view, there isn’t much here that could be used in placements in a Hollywood movie yet it is that determined individuality that provides the main motivation to listen and listen carefully. Her music stands up well to close examination with deeper meaning, both obvious and obscure, always somewhere near the surface. This surface is like a river with eddies and currents taking the fallen branches from the tree of life and letting them go where the winds and waters of time take them. The stories that are told are sometimes oblique and, even if you think that the ending is exactly what it would be in lesser hands, the journey is on a path that many would not follow.

As the world of music becomes more programmed so that our cultural overlords can sell us more festival tickets, the musician as an individual will no doubt become extinct. Until that dark day comes there will always be space between my ears for Sheila K Cameron. Perhaps she is not for everyone but she should be.

Available from Bandcamp.