East Anglian Greg McDonald has earned much praise for his songwriting and for his performances with Dawn Parade. Stranger At The Door is his first album since going solo last year. Produced by Sam Inglis, this is an assured work which confirms Greg McDonald as a singer-songwriter of class, very much in the Leonard Cohen/Scott Walker vein. His political affinities are also evident: ‘Kopyleft Greg McDonald 2008. All rights reversed. Unauthorised lending, copying, broadcasting and generally taking things into your own hands is encouraged.' The album was made in ‘Free Romsey'.

Commanding vocals, rich instrumental arrangements and enigmatically poetic lyrics are the crucial ingredients in this territory: Stranger At The Door possesses each of these. Sample lyrics:

There's a man stood at my door

He wears no coat; he has no face

He says my life is no longer my own

He says that I must go

Far from this place

I told him, "Friend, I'm not your man

My door's unmarked - you'll find no cross"

He said, "This is the place. None ever go with grace

All are dragged off"

I'm not so low when something higher than me

Comes by at night I don't have eyes to see

I told my eyes you didn't see nothing

I told my ears: you never heard him speak his name

It's nothing but the rain falling into my dreams

It's too absurd

(Stranger At The Door)

We had Bert Russell in a fix

He'd lost his cycle clips

When your chinos are torn in strips

There's no logic to pure mathematics

Still it cuts him like a knife

That this really is his life

And he doesn't love his wife

And he's cycling home to tell her

The Principia Mathematica's a picnic

The algebra of hunger rumbles on

And on this bridge at Waterloo

I just don't know what to do

I give my life to making one and one make one and still it makes two

(Taxi)

This album succeeds completely in its intentions. If you're looking for the new Leonard Cohen, here he is.

Greg McDonald on My Space

Greg plays CB1 on Saturday 18 October, and the Portland Arms on Saturday 22 November.