CASTLEMUSIC You Can’t Take Anyone (Blue Fog) Rating: NNNN
Recorded over two Toronto seasons, Jennifer Castle’s debut captures both the bitter chill and searing heat of her hometown. Her soothsaying voice is heady like summertime, while the sparse, unaccompanied arrangements are as icy as February.
Likewise, songs move at glacial pace, with Castle’s delicate but determined warble the driving force and Ryan Driver and Doug Tielli’s harmonies carving out the texture. It’s during these boy-girl exchanges that Castle’s echoey ebb-and-flow acoustica feels most honed. “I’ve been putting up a fight” she intones on pretty duet Your Hand Is A Wing. For everyone else, resistance is futile.
