JUDITH OWEN
Mopping Up Karma

COURGETTE
* * * *
Skewered balladry from Mrs Harry Shearer
On her sixth album, Welsh songbird Owen revisits material originally earmarked for an aborted project 10 years ago, a classy set of pastoral folk and chamber pop with wry lyrical twists. "Ruby Red Lips" and "Creatures of Habit" are close, in women singer-songwriter terms, to American mavericks like Tori Amos or Sam Phillips, but there's an underlying Britishness that occasionally recalls her sometime collaborator Richard Thompson. No less an authority than Jamie Cullum has described her as "a female Randy Newman", and he's not far wrong.
TERRY STAUNTON