We were just thinking that we could do with some regurgitated old time jazz, folk and blues music – and then up pops Liz Green. What exactly we are meant to do with it now we have it is anyone’s guess, especially when we can get the real deal anytime we want.

Manchester-based Green has been releasing music since 2007, yet this is her debut, and it starts with Hey Joe (seemingly the lack of originality runs into song titles too). It’s a meander at best – it has a repetitive melody and the warm brass is unable to save the drudgery.

The acoustic picking is the mainstay here, quietly turning the songs onwards – the brass is always close by, breathing down the neck of the compositions or skipping with a vibrant attitude. And when things start swinging, like on Midnight Blues, it can become quite likeable – though we would still rather hear the Be Good Tanyas.

Maybe its Green’s vocal – it warbles and shakes, obviously intent on re-creating past masters, but it feels like the songs suffer because of the author’s insistence on being ‘old time’. Other titles, like Bad Medicine and Rag and Bone, are further evidence that Green wants to work solely in her hero’s space and time. Saying that, the former track has a great brass breakdown – the solitary blow-out in the refrain is an infectious passage.

Admittedly she knows her stuff – these are dusty old hooks, taking the traditional and trying to inject a new slant. And undoubtedly live this would make for a fine set of tracks. As a recorded medium though it offers little that we haven’t heard before, and as a result it never really captures the imagination.

-Marnie Reed-