SCOTTISH singer Eddi Reader has followed her acclaimed Robert Burns album with a clarion call for peace in strife-torn times.

She wrote Safe As Houses with her musical partner Boo Hewerdine in Yorkshire on the day suicide bombers caused mayhem in London. It is about how intense love can blossom out of intense hate.

Another Hewerdine song, Peacetime, is a meditation on a world without conflict. Reader's romanticism shines through when she sings the words of Burns in the heartbreaking Aye Waukin-O.

She reveals the fresh beauty of another Burns song, Ye Banks And Braes O' Bonnie Doon. Reader sings about another Ayrshire river, The Afton, in a song by Johnny Dillon, of the band Heirloom.

Her love of humanity and nature shines through on this album, which she made with some fine folk musicians, including John McCusker, Ian Carr and Andy Cutting.


Eddi Reader plays Grand Opera House, York, on February 23