Album: Rosie Thomas <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

These Friends of Mine, Nettwerk

Believing that her career was becoming too business-driven, Rosie Thomas chose to return to the looser approach of her earliest releases by recording the charming These Friends of Mine at the Philadelphia and New York homes of her colleagues Denison Witmer and Sufjan Stevens. The new immediacy is apparent in a song like the aptly-titled "Why Waste More Time?", a duet with Stevens recorded just 10 minutes after she wrote it in his kitchen, and in the album's several New-York-themed songs. The results profit from the technical restrictions, with spiders' webs of guitar- and banjo-picking gently bolstered by subtle string arrangements, and Thomas singing quietly so as not to wake their flatmates: the effect of her hushed delivery of REM's "The One I Love" is to temper the song's meanness with regret, or even shame. Elsewhere, "Kite Song" crystallises her desire to fly free, without losing comfort and stability, while the title track offers a sketch of her collaborators: "They don't own things/ They don't hold hands/They guard their hearts the best they can".