The popular British indie-folk singer-songwriter returns with her eighth studio LP, one of of gentle intricacy and delicate acoustic beauty, particularly reflecting on newly becoming a mother, as well as ideas and behaviours inherited down generations. Stylistically this continues deep into the Laurel Canyon/ Joni Mitchell / Dory Previn / Nick Drake mode, and as well as her clear, insightful vocals, guitar finger-picking is particularly strong on this album, particularly on the clever number Caroline, which riffs on the idea of a half-forgotten song with added serene orchestral strings. There’s a dream-like feel of wonder to this album, perhaps still basking in the awe and exhaustion of having a young daughter in 2023 (her 2020 album Song for Our Daughter was prophetic) who is the object of much of the songs and whose voice can be heard in the background including opener Child of Mine and on the two Lullaby . Particularly highlights include former Song of the Day Patterns which has mention also of what’s handed down from her mother and the generations of women before her, the serene beauty of Looking Back which imagines end of life might look like, the old piano tinkling in the background on No One’s Gonna To Love You Like I Can, the flushed with melancholy The Shadows, and the oddball time-ticking organ, strings and woodwind instrumental Interlude (Time Passages). Soft, sensitive, perceptive, and exquisitely performed work. Out on Chrysalis Records
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