The press release issued by Skye Media for to yack-up Forget October, the forthcoming record by Canadian duo Martha's Trouble, takes the time to quote a scribbler for Record Eagle;

"It's commonplace to refer to folk musicians as modern day troubadours, travelling from town to town with their songs like the wandering musicians of old. But Rob and Jen Slocumb actually live that rootless existence."

I have no particular desire for to doubt these claims. I mean, I didn't go searching through phone-books or nothing for proof of geographical bindings. I did, however, doubt the images conjured in the Mind De Duke by this statement when I hit the old Play button and so on, that the fifth record by these ballad-spouting folks might unfold.

I expected perhaps something indebted to the spirit of Woody Guthrie, something timeless and rambling, like maybe what that freaky motherfucker Jim White would concoct, or even Gillian Welch.

What bounded from the speakers was nothing if not the best record The Corrs never made.

Be ye not fooled by this yacking of rootless wanderings and so on. This is a commercial country-pop album what just happens to be a lot more melancholic, and a hell of a lot more rewarding, than, say, Shania Twain's stuff before she turned into a really embarrassing Cher clone.

However, that bout of presumptuous presuming is purely The Duke's fault, an example of the old expectations running riot, demanding that this record by these folks what probably never even heard of The Duke (although probably heard folks talk in bars about the fucking amazing article on Woody Allen they found on the web-net), pander to my very own tastes.

Barring the slight hint of a bluegrass influence propping up the intro of Sweet Irene, this is, for the most part, the kind of atmospheric Lanois-esque, mournful yet sweetly melodic pop music what Deacon Blue were peddling a decade or more ago.

Opener City Skyline sounds for all of Russia like some reinterpretation of Dignity, the Deacon Blue song about, I believe, a fella wants a boat or some shit on account of the poverty or something.

But let's take this beast on its own terms. If one were in possession of a bar-chart or two, maybe a spreadsheet, one could conduct a scientific analysis what would reveal that Forget October is a consistently wonderful work. Yes, it's commercial, yes it sounds like it could happily rest among the rotating blandness on offer on CMT or somesuch, but, prejudices aside, there's no denying the fact that at least half of these 12 tracks are certainly memorable, and, on occasion, hauntingly beautiful.

Waverly, for example, what opens with a bit of the old bongo-drums and acoustic strummery, is a gorgeous, evocative hymn to regret and rebirth. The lyrics occasionally stroll a little too close to self-obsessed whining, but the arrangement and, most of all, Jen Slocumb's anguished, arresting vocal performance, conspire to ensure that what might have been a cloying, over-sentimental bout of cliché-molesting, emerges as something much more powerful.

Commercial it may be, but Forget October is also a coherent, incredibly atmospheric work. Sign Of Life has a hookline built around a yearning for the "Colorado River", and it's impossible not to feel moved by the passion on evidence.