by Stephen Dowling BBC News Online entertainment staff

Matthews has changed direction

Cerys Matthews, who forced pop band Catatonia to split after leaving the group following treatment for anxiety and exhaustion, has released her first solo album.

Matthews spent seven months living in the traditional home of country music - the US's Nashville, Tennessee - recording the album, titled Cockahoop.

The first track is something of a love song. Not to her husband, producer and musician Seth, nor even a hangover to her old partner, Catatonia's Mark Roberts.

No, Chardonnay is a love song to the white wine that never seemed very far away from Matthews' hands during Catatonia's rise to the top of the Britpop ranks.

It is a curious start to what is very much a stereotype-deflating album. Matthews, let it not be forgotten, was one of the brashest, loudest leaders in Britpop.

Through her leather-lunged delivery, Catatonia had a string of hits, from Sweet Catatonia, to I Am The Mob, the anthemic Mulder and Scully and Road Rage.

But the brassy pop that made Matthews a star had also led to exhaustion and despair. When Catatonia collapsed after the poorly received Paper, Scissors, Stone in 2001, the Welsh singer decided to turn her back on Britain and decamp to Nashville.

Along the way she met up with the producer who would become her husband, and decided to make a solo album at odds with Catatonia's tempestuous guitar pop.

Country music fans should be impressed

Cockahoop is an intriguing record, in as much as Matthews has been happy to include a string of covers alongside her own songs.

Most singers starting a solo career do so with a broadside. This is a bunch of relaxed sessions that somehow got turned into a record.

Chardonnay, the afore-mentioned ode to the grape, is lilting where Matthews used to be brassy; while her voice can still scrape paint at 50 paces, the banjos picking in the background are oddly sympathetic.

The song seems perfect for Matthews - in fact, it was co-written by Strangler Hugh Cornwell, and has never been recorded.

Another faultless cover is Chicago country group The Handsome Family's Weightless Again.

Lousiana, meanwhile, is Matthews' off-kilter telling of snaring her husband - one that takes in powdered cream, redwood forests and the genocide of the native American population. It is a bizarre but endearing tale.

In fact, the quasi-country sound of Cockahoop fits Matthews' voice wonderfully. She has said in interviews that she had wanted to make a folk album. She has, but a million miles away from what her Celtic heritage might suggest.

It is, however, a compelling little record to those prepared to gamble on Matthews' new direction.

If you are a fan of Glen Campbell and the idea of long summer evenings on a Nashville back porch, then you will be pleasantly surprised.