This is a lovely album, richer and more expansive - not to mention more glossily produced - than The Big Black & The Blue (which isn't to disparage that first, comparatively rawer but still strikingly good lp at all). My favourites are back to back in the middle - first the dreamy, meandering "To A Poet", which starts with some pretty 'oooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oooh'-ing and Joni Mitchell-esque verse trilling, and also shares with Joni (at her best) a captivating compellingness that coexists with the sense that the wending tune is almost being made up as it goes along, and then "I Found A Way", which invokes both Neko Case and Fleet Foxes; it's possible to hear bits of all three of those artists, and plenty of others (piquantly, "Emmylou" namechecks, as well as the obvious, Gram, June Carter and Johnny), throughout the record.
