Anna Coogan. The Wasted Ocean.

A marine biologist who grew up in New England listening to sea shanties, Anna Coogan is no stranger to the second element. The Wasted Sea, follow up to her acclaimed debut The Nocturnal Among Us is in the main a set of songs about the sea and the folk who live and die on, near or under it. A delicate album, there are no rollicking bawdy ballads here, rather forlorn tales of women awaiting the return to shore of their men or mourning those who do not return. Coogan sings beautifully and is ably supported throughout by a superb group of musicians who cosset the songs with some fine Dobro, mandolin, violin and banjo, the soft mallet drumming on the opening song, The Sons Will Join Their Fathers could almost be the waves lapping the shore.
Despite the delicacy of the playing there is plenty of emotion on show here. Coogan can sound steely, hurt, lost at times. On her fine cover of Phil Och’s epic The Crucifixion (dedicated to her father and perhaps an odd inclusion but it does feature a verse about a mariner) she builds up a righteous anger. The highlights however are Come Ashore Love, a haunting song that features Colby Sander’s Dobro and Come The Wind, Come the Rain where Coogan sings accompanied only by Eyvind Kang’s violin on a song that is the closest the album gets to a traditional folk sound.
A fine successor to her debut album, The wasted Ocean is well recommended to anyone who likes Kris Delmhhorst, Alela Diane or Rachel Harrington. She is well acquainted with Glasgow having appeared at Celtic Connections and indeed mentions this fine city in her liner notes (noting that the spark for the album was lit on a “soggy Glasgow morning). She’s appearing at Glasgow Americana on October 6th.
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Come Ashore, Love