KATHLEEN EDWARDS plays the Phoenix on February 11. See listing. Rating: NNNN
How you feel about Kathleen Edwards’s Voyageur depends a lot on the expectations you bring to it. Ever since the news got out that Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, had come aboard as co-producer, the buzz about Edwards and her fourth album has reached circles far beyond the alt-country one to which she once belonged.
But those hoping to hear the Toronto-based musician take off on a dramatically different path complete with, say, Auto-Tune experiments might be disappointed. You get the sense that Vernon and Edwards worked diligently and dutifully to keep her music’s essence intact: those soaring, singalong choruses, the lean-machine traditional structures.
The arrangements, though, are far more expansive, all gorgeously produced and delivered with subtlety. The badass pulsating synth in Sidecars. The Crazy Horse crunch of Mint’s guitars. And there’s greater depth of emotion: less sass, more vulnerability. Edwards’s yearning vocals carry more than a hint of worry, even in the surging pop of Change The Sheets. Against themes of bewilderment, loss/hope and marital regret, that seems just right.
Plus, they blend beautifully with Vernon’s vocals on gently weary A Soft Place To Land and countryish ballad House Full Of Empty Rooms, and with Norah Jones’s on striking final tune For The Record.
Top track: Change The Sheets
