ROSIE NIMMO "WHERE TIME SUSPENDS" CD ALBUM REVIEW by Tom King

Edinburgh singer/songwriter Rosie Nimmo releases her fourth album, “Where Time Suspends” on February 5th 2021, and the 10 tracks on this mellow and laid-back album could just be what you need to take you through the cold winter months that we have been told are waiting just behind the final blue sky days of 2020.

“Where Time Suspends” is at its heart a contemplative album that makes you want to re-look at many moments in your life as, in song, Rosie takes us from that inner child within us all to that one lost love and eventually having to come to terms with the loss of those close to us. This is also an album of Rosie Nimmo playing with different vocal styles and timings and in many cases this gives the overall work a very 1960s/1970s “soundscape” to it, so reminiscent of those days of the great singer/songwiters like Neil Young and Carole King (both credited as musical influences by Rosie on her website).  We are not living in the past here though, and environmental issues and our growing interaction with online social media (and its limitations to our human psyche) also come under exploration in words and songs.

There are some interesting moments being developed on this album by Rosie’s writing, and one of those is “Small Child” with the simple belief that within us all still resides the small child that we once were.  If any song on this album is open to a wider exploration this is it as, for me, the small child within us all is that rock we stand upon where all our creativity stems from as we never truly lose that ability of a child to create imaginary friends, places and wonderlands.   We never lose that insatiable curiosity of a child.  Also in contrast to that rock of creativity, so often the pillars of sand of our childhood experiences turn into all of our adult insecurities.  As Rosie so rightly says in this song, our need to be loved also comes from the small child within us all.

For me “Heaven” is interesting simply because half way through the song you are taken in a direction that is a little different from where many songwriters would go, but “he was the youngest in a long list” is line that has so many other stories to tell another day too.
This album is, for me, a little bit like the old A and B sides of a vinyl record as there is a definite change in the style of the album for the second half, and some of my favourite tracks are here as Rosie moves often into a more laid back Jazz vocal sound and “Laugh” is a good example of this.

If I have to pick a favourite song on this album then it is “Lonely People”, and part of that reason is the way Rosie uses words here and departs from the conventional line by line construction of a song lyric.

The last track on this album “Deep Peace” is a close runner up for my favourite song here, and one that leaves us all to contemplate that “lost space” that people leave behind them when they go to wherever we all go in the end whilst embracing that there is perhaps out there a wider “spirituality” to our existence.

Rosie Nimmo is also developing her music on this album too, and there is an obvious love for introductions to songs based on good and solid musical principles, and for the most part this all works well. There are some intriguing uses of words on some of these songs, and words have their own colours and shapes too, and I know that this is a very personal opinion, but a few songs here seem to be just asking for a very stripped down production of just Rosie’s voice and guitar to allow the colours and shapes of the words alone to come to the foreground.

Further information on this new album, Rosie Nimmo and her music is available at https://www.rosienimmo.com/
 
TRACK LISTING
1. Could Have Been
2. Oops a Daisy
3. Small Child
4. Heaven
5. Music is Sunshine
6. Laugh
7. Lonely People
8. Choices
9. Keyboard Warriors
10. Deep Peace
 
Review by Tom King
30.11.20