Kathleen Edwards:Voyageur

Tags: Alt Country, kathleen edwards, voyageur

MapleMusic; 2012
Dropped by Zach Frimmel

If people only know Kathleen Edwards because of her platonic affiliation with Justin Vernon, then there’s a veneer still to be scratched off. As the daughter of a diplomat, she experienced a bit of an aberrant childhood, spending recess in Korea and Switzerland. The Canadian singer-songwriter initiated her musical proficiency at the age of five via classical training of the violin, which she seems to have bartered for a guitar. As time elapsed, Edwards claims that Indigo Girls (a big-time favorite of Vernon as well) helped empower the female musician inside of her and acted as a foundation to build upon. Edwards’s first three releases erected stepping stones for her to establish her surefooted, Welchian style, which provided lubrication for her revered 2008 album, Asking For Flowers.

Since 2008, Edwards’s career has been on an upswing having shared the stage with Bob Dylan and Willy Nelson, plus the footnote of having her subsequent music described as “Lucinda Williams fronting Crazy Horse.” As impressionable as her Asking For Flowers album was to her catalogue, her fourth studio album goes by the name of Voyageur, and it leaps clear off the grid regarding any musical territory she has traversed. The album is co-produced by Justin Vernon and features Norah Jones, S.Carey (from Bon Iver), John Roderick (of The Long Winters) and several other talents. A damp airiness is present from the first ten seconds of “Empty Threat” to the last seven minutes of “For The Record,” which implements a digital xylophone-like sound and where Vernon-felt guitar licks are neatly propped.

On Voyageur, the Canadian chanteuse is trying to reinvent her sound and unbridle herself from the unwanted stigma that musicians sometimes get pegged. Norah Jones also underwent a comparable modification from her Come Away With Me sound to her The Fall sound. To demonstrate Edwards’s willingness to sidestep her usual sound, Voyageur is less Emmylou Harris twang-y like “I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory” from Asking, and more Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker-esque with flustered fizz, as she wrote in the midst of her divorce. A familiar “Come Pick Me Up” vibe can even be evinced on “A Soft Place To Land.” Judging by the tone and demeanor of her renovated sound, Kathleen Edwards has repositioned her weight from one lean to another, giving listeners a voyage of discovery.

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Kathleen Edwards:Voyageur

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