Review – Rose Bygrave “Walking Home”
album through Black Market Music
Born in
1955, Rose
Bygrave decided to take music on as a
full-time occupation in the late 1970s and, joining Shane
and Marcia Howard
in their project Goanna two years prior to their ‘one hit’ (as pundits would put it) she has been quietly achieving
on quite large stages ever since.
When members of
Goanna
decided to ‘pursue solo careers’ in the early 1990s
it allowed Rose (or Roslyn to her mother) to expand on her individual style
and work on her own songs. It also put her keyboard
and/or vocal abilities in demand for releases by Colin Buchanan, Yothu
Yindi, Shane Howard, Marcia Howard, Ted
Egan, Bruce
Woodley, Kavisha
Mazella and Dave
Steel. All this culminated in the late last year
in the release of her own solo album “White Bird,” but it took a
fraction of that time to follow that record up with this one, “Walking Home” through Black Market Music.
Combining essences of Toni
Childs (on Lost and Found), Kavisha
Mazella, Judie
Tzuke (especially on Feet of Clay
and Your Blue Shirt), a distinctive Gaelic/Celtic folk sound and a
contemporary adult bent, Rose has created a truly beautiful album. What she says on her website, too, is food for reflection whilst really listening
to these dozen songs: “My songs are about place, love, travelling and cultural
trust: they have come out of a sense of this country built up over twenty years
of travelling in cities and the Outback and in meeting with people from all
walks of life, including Aboriginal communities in the city and the bush….”
Rose has two websites: http://www.geocities.com/thegoannaband/rosebygrave.htm that represents her body of work up until October last
year. The other, http://www.rosebygrave.webcentral.com.au/, was inaccessible at the time of writing due to server
problems at one end or the other. But listening to this album and reading the Geocities website inspired a rare 
reaction: in a world where the word talent is
bandied about, using it as a gesture of awe feels somehow wrong. But here is a true
talent, recognised on a national basis nearly 20 years ago as a member of a
band and still very highly regarded within the local industry. She would,
however, still seem to be vying for commercial success, and if this album were
any indication of the content of the previous, you’d have to wonder what
Australia’s musical movers and shakers are actually moving and/or shaking… Rose Bygrave “Walking
Home” through Black Market Music – truly remarkable.