David Rotheray: Answer Ballads – review

It's such a simple concept one wonders why it wasn't done before; songs that adopt characters named in well-known hits. Hence Roxanne's Song in response to the Police's Roxanne, Maggie's Song replying to Rod's Maggie May and so on. The drawback is that David Rotheray, who is ex-Beautiful South, hasn't delivered songs with the killer hooks of the originals (hardly surprising). Instead come reflective, well-arranged numbers voiced by an impressive folk roster: Mary Coughlan does a bar-room drawl for Lucille's Song, Jackie Oates brings coy chamber folk, and Eliza Carthy makes a strident Maggie. A witty, entertaining cavalcade.