CATHRYN Craig has a new man in her life. For a Nashville-dwelling singer-songwriter that could mean she's opened up the possibilities for more songs about break-ups, but in this case the musical omens are much more promising than that. Craig is no stranger to Scotland - two of her three recordings have been released by the Perth-based Goldrush label, but this was her first visit with Strawbs guitarist Brian Willoughby, whose sojourn in Music City, Tennessee, has seen him develop into one of those proliferating superpickin' Nashville cats the Lovin' Spoonful used to sing about.

Sitting nonchalantly on a stool, Willoughby framed Craig's delicate songs of ill-starred love, metaphorical snakes, bad rascals, and soul-healing DIY, giving them added harmonic depth and lifting them in the right places with classy, metallic blue phrases. Craig has a voice that, with its easy tunefulness punctuated by soulful, beautifully judged, achy breaky harmonics, is either a lucky break away from much bigger time recognition or too honest-sounding for the music industry. But on the duo's Black & White particularly, a powerful story of inter-racial marriage which has all the hallmarks of songwriting as movie treatment, she caught a mood that could have produced goosebumps on sheet metal.