Album: Mary Gauthier, The Foundling (Proper)

The Foundling is a song cycle of a particularly personal kind. Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier was abandoned to a local New Orleans care home in 1962, an experience which left her with a pervasive rootlessness, "the curse of gypsy on my soul".

Three years ago she traced her birth-mother, who rejected her again. The Foundling is a bitterly sad affair, shifting from the haunted tone of "Mama Here, Mama Gone" to the adoptee identity crisis in songs such as "Blood Is Blood", "Sweet Words" and "The Orphan King", which explains her reliance on the kindness of strangers. Produced by Cowboy Junkie Michael Timmins, it employs flavours of accordion, violin, organ and weary horns (courtesy of The Band's Garth Hudson) which impart the tone of a Randy Newman album, minus the mordancy.

DOWNLOAD THIS The Foundling; Mama Here, Mama Gone; Sideshow