Multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Sara Lowes has been adding lots of colour to musical palettes in the last decade, working with the likes of Micah Hinson, Jim Noir and King Creosote to name but a few. She’s perhaps best known for her work with Burnley-cum-Texas psych-folk progrockers The Earlies, applying assorted orchestrations and harmonies and touring as their mainstay keyboard player. It’s been a musical scholarship of sorts, invited by Christian Madden of the band to join 8 years ago as they finished off their studies at Burnley College. Lowes put her own musical ambitions on hold to take a longer view of things as a musician, and it’s paid dividends if Back To Creation is anything to go by, an accomplished and impressive debut which showcases a rich vein of musical styles. The intervening years have also seen a sprinkling of material in her own right: a mini-album Tomorrow’s Laughter in 2008 and the Single Girl ep in 2010, which are worth investigating, but this is the big one!

The title track is a nice way to open, with gently undulating harmonies quickly slipping into something sassier, a piano-driven hook followed by warm jazz horns, quietly confident and the rich sound a possible nod to her compadres doubtlessly involved in this project. ‘Night Times’ starts like its predecessor but then sonically takes off into Curved Air folk territory, and there’s a nice grandstanding chorus with spacy-sounding keyboards. Lowe’s voice is wispy and harmonious, but she’s no shrinking violet either: on ‘Vapour Trails’ the vocal is fuller and bolder, the ghost of Sandy Denny lives! This and the accompaniment, with Byrds-like jangling guitar and a cacophony of brass and beautiful sighing strings at the end, make it the standout track for me.

One review of Back To Creation seems to be equating Lowes music with a new Manchester music scene, burying the gloomladen past of Factory, Oasis and The Stone Roses, but it’s possibly looking down the wrong end of the telescope. The Earlies reach was always Transatlantic, spreading their tentacles in all sorts of directions, more a love of great music than being bound to any particularly local scene. Ironically, by sending MP3 files to each other across the ocean they allowed their multi-layered music to develop organically, a sound coming from somewhere deeper inside but wise enough to acknowledge its roots. Lowes music echoes this, nothing sounds forced and she shows great versatility as an artist, equally at home rocking out on the West Coast-sounding ‘I Wish’ (I’m reluctant to say jazz-rock, but the best shades of 70s Chicago Transit Authority ’25 Or 6 To 4′) reprised as brash-sounding instrumental ‘I Wish, Don’t You’ at the end of the album, or turning her hand to the more psychedelic ‘Bite The Pie’, or the jazz-infused ‘Something I Don’t Know’, wonderfully embellished with a Dexys-like/TK Horns section. Compare those with the gentler piano-based numbers like ‘You’ (up there with the likes of Kate Bush’s ‘Lionheart’) and winningly unassuming ‘Untitled’, another personal favourite, with a darker melancholic feel and pause for thought which seem to throw the rest of the album slightly off-kilter.

So nice to see an artist plying their craft for the long-haul: Back To Creation is no one-stop shop, Lowes will continue to absorb influences and work with different people, gathering experience and developing as both singer-songwriter and musician. And plenty of colour in the long and winding road ahead.