Birds With Broken Wings - Colleen Lovett

Advantages: An enjoyable album with catchy melodies and haunting lyrics
Disadvantages: slightly sinister

...Bird--x--- (Jayne Wisener) "Green finch, and linnet bird, Nightingale, blackbird, How is it you sing? How can you jubilate sitting in cages never taking wing?" Johanna, Todd's daughter has been kept locked away from the outside world for all the time that Todd has been away, here, sitting and looking out of the window, longing to be somewhere other than her confined room, she sings to her bird which is, ironically, kept in a cage. A beautiful melody and one which describes the longings and desires that Johanna has to be free....Johanna's song mirrors that of Todd in that he is not set free from his past mentally, just as Johanna is not set free physically. --x--7. Johanna--x-- (Jamie Campbell Bower) "I feel you Johanna I feel you Do they think that walls can hide you? Even now I'm at you window I am in the dark beside you Buried sweetly... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Great music score
Disadvantages: Availability

...Music from the TV series The Thorn Birds. The TV show was based on the 1977 novel by Colleen McCullough. A best seller at the time and impulsive viewing for ITV viewers in the UK in the early/mid 1980s. The programmes was set on a fictional farm - or "sheep station" in the Australian outback in pre-war days and focussed on the dramas that unfold and develop around the Clearys, a millionaire family. Over the years, various deaths, crises and disasters tell the Cleary family story. The disasters are deaths by fires, drowning and... if my memory serves me correctly, death by pig or wild boar! This CD features 58 tracks from the original Thorn Birds soundtrack. Whereas the music may not help the ladies with the swooning over Richard Chamberlain, as the early 80's hearthrob, the tracks do take you emotion memory back to the programme... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Well, it's certainly original...
Disadvantages: Gradually becomes annoying

...Pleasant at first, the album gradually becomes a little boring. Its highlight is its cute music box version of Happy Birthday included in track “Charles’s Birthday card”. In fact, there are lots of music boxes. In nearly every song. Well, I suppose it is a concept album, with music boxes being the concept… But so much cuteness is invariably grating. Perhaps Colleen’s concept is a little too narrow. It also seems that Mademoiselle Cécile Schott (Colleen’s real name) is a fan of strange song titles such as “What is a Componium?”. (No, we don’t know either. Answers on a postcard please.) She should have met Snow Patrol a few years back - they’d have got on well. Remember "Get Balsamic Vinegar... Quick You Fool", anyone? Maybe one day, she too can scale the heights of stadium-sized MOR territory.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful