Laura Cantrell has exceptional taste. One listen to her celebrated radio show "Radio Thrift Shop"on WFMU and you will know this instantly, as she mixes old school country and bluegrass with the best contemporary singer-songwriters. The cover art to this, her third album, is by the superlative artist Fred Tomaselli, and her choice of arcane, literate, and lovely cover songs is exquisite: a previously unreleased Lucinda Williams song ("Letters"), an obscure Appalachian murder ballad originally collected by her great-great aunt ("Poor Ellen Smith"), and a fabulous tune by singer-songwriter Emily Spray ("14th Street"). Of course, if good taste were all it took to be a great artist, we'd all be great artsists, right? Laura's not a crooner per se, but she has become an amazing singer, with delightful control over her voice. In fact, Cantrell sounds a lot like the long-lost, Tennessee-born sister to Linda Thompson, especially on the Dave Schramm-penned "And Still," and her own "Old Downtown." This is cosmic, American music, sung with subtlety and produced perfectly by JD Foster. ?Mike McGonigal.
Laura Cantrell
Humming By the Flowered Vine
[Matador; 2005]
Rating: 7.6
Tradition has it that artists come to Nashville to make it in country music, but Laura Cantrell had to leave her hometown to establish her career. Attending college in New York and fast-tracking toward a bank career, she started DJ'ing a radio show spotlighting local and traditional artists and eventually released two well-received albums for Diesel Only Records (run by her husband Jeremy Tepper). Humming By the Flowered Vine, her third full-length and Matador debut, doesn't stray from that familiar territory: Like its predecessors, it's full of sweetly sung melodies and deceptively simple arrangements of originals and lovingly chosen covers.
Superficially, Cantrell's songs would sound perfectly at home between Allison Krauss and Norah Jones on any playlist, despite the genre differences between them. That's not a damning observation, though: As with Krauss (but less with Jones), below the placid surface of Cantrell's music runs a current of heartbreak that's all the more potent for being so well hidden. It's a hurt inherited from nearly a century of country music tradition, but Cantrell tints it with the patina of personal experience. In other words, she doesn't need to be innovative when she is so expressive.
Produced by JD Foster, Humming By the Flowered Vine is slightly more ambitious and decorous than her first two albums. Cantrell corrals an impressive stable of collaborators, including former Blood Orange Mark Spencer and Tin Hat Trio's Rob Burger. Her touring guitarist Dave Schramm even contributes the relatively baroque original "And Still", which features Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico. But these personalities are well integrated into a larger sound, and the result is a much richer, more nuanced backdrop for Cantrell's voice, enlivening the swing rhythms of "What You Said" and "Wishful Thinking" and lending a spare texture to "Bees" and "Khaki & Corduroy".
Still, Cantrell remains squarely the focus of the album. Recalling contemporaries such as Krauss and Iris Dement-- as well as forebears like Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline at her most restrained-- she still sounds as down-home and unpretentious as ever, with a sophisticated simplicity that's more Big Apple urbane than Music Row countrypolitan. The lead track, a cover of Emily Spray's "14th Street", describes the nervous hope of unrequited love through plainspoken lyrics, but the songs's power comes from the arcing chorus melody and from Cantrell's gentle delivery, which drops into a sing-speak whisper as it expresses her truest desire: "Maybe one step or two/ Then I'd be walking next to you."
Most of the tracks on Humming By the Flowered Vine similarly nurse a kernel of ache. "Khaki & Corduroy" evokes a young Southerner's dislocation in the big city, and the standout "Bees" gracefully conveys end-of-life yearning. "I miss the beach/ I miss the honey/ I miss them humming by the flowered vine," Cantrell sings delicately. "My time is short now/ I feel it coming/ I see you darling in morning light." Instead of grandstanding for maximum tearjerker drama, Cantrell, accompanied by Ted Reichman's elegant piano, emphasizes the track's quiet wistfulness without sounding precious or slight. This understated approach works against her only occasionally, as on the traditional "Poor Ellen Smith". Her voice is entirely too clam to convey the grief and confusion of a wrongly accused man, and the narrative's violence and injustice feel transparent and too close to the surface.
Finally Cantrell does go back to Nashville: Humming By the Flowered Vine closes with the singer wandering the streets of her hometown on "Old Downtown", urged onward by Schramm's frayed guitar. She's struck by the city's complicated and conflicted history-- not Music Row but the monument to WWI hero Sergeant Alvin York. Gradually her civic musings give way to a feeling of personal loss as she realizes that her hometown is no longer her home.
-Stephen M. Deusner, June 17, 2005
Review by Mark Deming
Laura Cantrell knows and loves good music too well to be a purist, and while her first two albums, Not the Tremblin' Kind and When the Roses Bloom Again, were firmly grounded in her great fondness for country music, she expands her boundaries a bit on her third set (and first for Matador), Humming by the Flowered Vine. While the feel of Humming by the Flowered Vine isn't radically different than her previous work, the sound and arrangements offer some new wrinkles, with producer J.D. Foster and a superb cast of musicians edging Cantrell into an inventive pop direction. The pensive love song "14th Street," a strong but sorrowful reading of "And Still," and the rare Lucinda Williams composition "Letters" all speak of a riskier musical mindset than Cantrell has allowed herself in the past, and the results are beautifully expressive and gracefully executed while quietly bearing a considerable musical weight. Fans of Cantrell's more traditionally oriented work need not fret, as her lovely covers of "Wishful Thinking" and "Poor Ellen Smith" confirm she still has a superb command of classic country styles, and her voice has lost none of its lovely clarity while revealing an even greater emotional force on these sessions. And while Cantrell is a marvelous interpretive songwriter with nearly faultless taste, her originals rank with the album's finest material; "Khaki & Corduroy," "Old Downtown," and "Bees" are all crafted with the wisdom and care of a fine short story. Humming by the Flowered Vine is an album that's a joy to listen to without sounding simple or hollow, and resonates with an evocative beauty comprised of both compassion and intellect; this music easily raises the bar for this gifted artist.
|
