All The Same – Megan Brickwood (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

We seem to live in a musical world where everyone is looking for the next sound, where there seems to be a desire to dismiss what has gone before as old and no longer fit for purpose, where there is only one direction—forward, with no backward glance or acknowledgment of what has gone before allowed.

That is never so obvious, surprisingly, as in the contemporary folk scene. For a sound built on such fine traditions and iconic sounds, it seems that almost all modern practitioners of the style can’t wait to “indie it up” or to “folktronic the hell out of it”. Remember, you only know what you’ve got once it’s gone, so maybe don’t be in such a rush to move on.

Megan Brickwood is well aware of what she’s got, and All The Same’s opening title track is the sound of her inspired by and infused in the genre’s classic blend of timeless tradition and 60s revival, the sort of thing that convincingly sounds like a long-lost Joni Mitchell or Sandy Denny number.

And, even when the music is injected with a fuller, band-driven sound, it is still more folk than rock, feels more roots than indie, and is more authentic than the artifice of the folk-pop world. “Hey Little Darling” is built of shimmering guitars and resonant chords, “Nothing New” is covered in lush, dreamlike sonic reverie, and even when “You’ll Never Find A Girl Like Me” heads into more country-pop territory, it still retains all the poise and delicacy, grace and deftness that marks it apart from all the other mainstream music and chart bound efforts. The gatekeepers of that scene are probably unaware, but this is precisely what that sector is crying out for in the wake of the cult of Swift and her music’s cheap, glamorous, and transient potency.

Megan Brickwood is a unique talent, and All The Same is a gorgeous album, proving that although there may be a flood of singer-songwriters heading from the more integral folk fields towards the more lucrative pop pastures, ironically, they are not all the same—far from it.