I always think that there's something just a little bit magic about the way that music comes to be woven through one's life. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, for I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's something to do with the way that music can come to feel so naturally and familiarly part of day-to-day existence, both internally and externally, and something to do with the sense of 'at home-ness' that comes from listening to music which has been transmuted in that way - a sense of rightness, profound in its intangibility. It's a feeling that can be either contemporaneous or retrospective (or, where the nature of the weave shifts over time, both), and often finds its inception in simple repeat playing of an album/song (the repeated playing acting as cause rather than effect, at least initially).
I bring this up in an attempt to make sense of how I feel about Humming By The Flowered Vine, an album about which I do feel this way just now and the main thing that I've listened to over the last couple of days. It wouldn't quite be accurate to say that it's slipped under my guard, for I fully expected it to be a treat, but I still feel as if something like that has happened, probably because the album's pleasures are so delicate and subtle. As a whole, it's somehow slighter than the music of, say, Lucinda or Gillian (always my points of reference for contemporary female countryish singer-songwriter types), and it's that which caused me to be surprised when I realised that I'd internalised it notwithstanding.
As I said, I did expect the album to be a treat, mostly on the strength of unutterably sweet lead single and album opener "14th Street" (available from her website along with plenty of other good stuff), which I've had on high rotation in recent months. I'd also heard Cantrell's take on an unrecorded Lucinda song, "Letters", which I'd heard on the radio, and a pair of Cantrell-composed ballads, "Khaki & Corduroy" and "Bees", which came to me through some music blog or other, but the thing is that only "14th Street" had really captured my attention, "Letters" having been a once-off hearing and the other two coming across as 'nice but not essential' - which is what made me think that, apart from the unassuming nature of the music, that sense of music-weaving has also been at play in my liking of the album.
As it looks now, then, all ten songs are lovely in their own right, but I particularly like "Khaki & Corduroy" and "Bees", both sparse, plaintive odes, the gradual burn of "Letters" (unusual in that it's partly propelled by electric guitar), summery closer "Old Downtown", and, of course, "14th Street", which is still gorgeous - lilting, melodic and yearnful (so, in the end, mostly those that I'd heard before - though of course I've just named half of the record!). I'm not sure what it is that I particularly like about Cantrell - her singing voice and style of singing are very winsome, but I think that almost as much of the appeal resides in the insightful, uncluttered arrangements of the songs and the high level of understated musicianship throughout. Very lovely.
