It's tempting but probably too glib to say that I was always going to like this, a collaboration between three artists whose music has been woven deep into my musical and overall life textures each for well over a decade now: Neko Case, one of my out and out favourites since I fell deep into Blacklisted, the record that maybe provided the first real hint to the alt-country road that I was eventually to follow, and provider of some of my most treasured musical experiences (on record and live); k.d. lang, with whose music I've been less deeply enwrapped but nonetheless somehow ever-present (going back to "Constant Craving", one of those pop songs that seems as if it's always been there) and from time to time particularly piercing; and Laura Veirs, whose strains have been endlessly in the air, more or less closely, since that first encounter with "Ohio Clouds" on the radio (triple r) all those years ago and from Troubled By The Fire onwards. Tempting, because that's a lot of very meaningful music and musical association bound up with these three, but too glib because how can you be sure that the pieces will come together in a way that's at least the sum of the whole?
But the truth is that I do like it, a lot, because the combination of these three voices - literally, in songwriting terms, and also more generally in terms of music, arrangement and instrumentation - is as lovely as might have been expected, and strikingly seamless (in that I'm only usually reminded of their individual - strongly defined - identities when I stop to think about it, so well do they flow and meld together across the record); Veirs' off-centre melodies and hooks catch along the way and provide much of the musculature, lang's languorous tones sink smoothly into the ones where she takes lead, and Case's golden voice is restrained to good effect in providing much of the texture and lines to join it all together. Not in the least showy or self-conscious, it's quite something.
But the truth is that I do like it, a lot, because the combination of these three voices - literally, in songwriting terms, and also more generally in terms of music, arrangement and instrumentation - is as lovely as might have been expected, and strikingly seamless (in that I'm only usually reminded of their individual - strongly defined - identities when I stop to think about it, so well do they flow and meld together across the record); Veirs' off-centre melodies and hooks catch along the way and provide much of the musculature, lang's languorous tones sink smoothly into the ones where she takes lead, and Case's golden voice is restrained to good effect in providing much of the texture and lines to join it all together. Not in the least showy or self-conscious, it's quite something.
