FREIGHT TRAIN BOOGIE REVIEW - USA - 4 STARS
MARISA YEAMAN 'Pure Motive' (Deep Pearl)

Marisa Yeaman is a young Australian singer/songwriter, and after three EPs, this is her first full-length venture. With less than half of the disc's content employing her band, Pure Motive is a showcase of the artist as she initially earned her chops: a girl, her guitar, and her songs, hitting the festivals, clubs, and pubs across the expanse of Oz. Somewhere along the way she tagged up with guitarist and sometime co-writer, Andrew Pendlebury, who also lends occasional vocal enhancement to complement a voice that is predominantly gentle and melodious, at times almost torchy, as in 'Lonely Puppet'. The duo generates a sound that is unique and complex in its apparent simplicity, but there's more depth here than initially meets the ear. Yeaman's not a rocker by any means, but, when she decides to cut it a bit loose, there's an edge surfacing that has the hallmark of, say, a Joni Mitchell, or, more precisely, Mary Chapin Carpenter, in her Shooting Straight in the Dark days; for that matter, 'Vacant Sign' would fit right into that CD's groove in every sense. With lyrics the likes of reading: "Some things in life can be easily defined; but love and danger draw a thin line", she has that essential ability to present a concept or feeling in the most precise package possible, saying, to paraphrase an old quote, 'the mostest, with the leastest'. Now that's the hallmark of good songwriting.
Don Grant www.freighttrainboogie.com