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Rosie Thomas - These Friends of Mine

Reviewed by Dave on 7th May 2007

We all lose our way from time to time and quite often it is our friends that help to put us back on track, this is precisely what happened to Rosie Thomas. After three albums and building quite the fan base she had become disillusioned with her motives for becoming an entertainer, she found that she had lost her way. So Rosie turned to her friends, one of whom just happened to be Sufjan Stevens (some of you may have heard of him).

Sufjan persuaded Rosie to head over to New York where the two of them could just relax and make music without the pressure of deadlines; throw in a third singer-songwriter, Denison Witmer and the result is this very simple, stripped down album.

Most of the songs on ‘These Friends of Mine’ were made up on the spot by Rosie with Sufjan and Denison scrambling to add their own parts before she forgot the words, this haphazard approach to writing and recording the album lends a wonderful fragility to all of the songs.

Stand out songs from the album include ‘Say Hello’ which sounds like something from Sufjan’s ‘Illinois’, the song is wonderfully constructed with Sufjan’s vocals providing counterpoint to Rosie’s soft lilting style. The song tells a story of two strangers who happen to find each other.

‘Paper Doll’ is another song that stands out from the album, each song has a simple chord structure that strengthens the feeling that these ten songs were made by friends who were just messing around rather than songs that were ever meant to be released to the general public.

‘These Friends of Mine’ has been doing the rounds in digital format and will be getting a hard copy release on the 14th May on Nettwerk, if you enjoyed Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Illinois’ and ‘Michigan’ albums or just soft acoustic rock in general, then ‘These Friends of Mine’ is money well spent.

Rating: 8/10
Website: www.rosiethomas.com
Buy It Now: amazon.co.uk

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