Reviewed by Drew Kelleher

It's unlikely you'll find a better debut album by any British band this or any other year. It could have been indulgent — let's face it, three experienced sessioners doing instrumental and some vocals inspired by the Celtic spirituality of the island of lona (and Lindisfarne). In fact this is richly evocative music which with it's crafty synthesis of the Gaelic and the symphonic, jazz rock fusion and ethnic folk influences make an album brimming over with superb musicianship. What gives the band focus are Joanne Hogg's superb vocals, the near acapella "Here I Stand", one of the most spine tingling haunting sounds heard for years, while the joyful instrumental "Flight Of The Wild Goose" where electric guitar and sax (the two Daves playing superbly throughout) is a riff which stays in the mind instantly. As an example of how the impoverished Christian music subculture can produce the goods, this deserves the widest possible distribution while the luminous spirituality which seems to exude from lona's haunting music show this to be an album with a profound ministry dimension.

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