Gracefully ghostly, dream-like, sensual, gentle and deliciously paced, this fourth LP by the American singer-songwriter floats like a perfect timeless acoustic folky boat stirring ripples of wistful emotions, profoundly complex lines and vivid images. “The chances of a lifetime might be hiding their tricks up my sleeve,” she sings on the walking-pace, echoey opener Life Is, one that would be at home some slow, obscure Parisian 1960s movie. “I want to be the sunlight of the century, I want to be a vestige of our senses free,” she concludes on World On A String, the gorgeous strummed number summoning up, with its video, endless sun-drenched sepia summers long forgotten. Overall this 28-minute album feels like a small simple, glittering pond that also has substantial depths, those also or profound, rich complexity, especially on the gorgeous melody of Get Your Head Out, or the even more minimal Nowhere It Was. Less is more in every way.
There’s gentle piano on Empires Never Know, following a melody that moves in all kinds of unexpected, yet somehow comfortable directions. And finally there’s The Last Year, a song of more gentle strums, the occasional drum, and tinkle of piano, but one in which the narrative twists and keeps moving understated emotions and directions: “I think we're gonna be together / And the storyline goes forever / And the distances I can see / It's you and me / I'm gone with all the changes in my mind /Out of luck, and out of time / And wouldn't you say the past's no longer quite / As near as you'd like, and it's gonna hurt you now/ ‘Cause I'm exactly what you said / The tears've all been shed …” Pitched perfect. Extraordinary songs. Out on Mexican Summer/City Slang.
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