For Maura’s 20th anniversary solo venture, her second release since 2010’s Parade of Echoes, she’s taken a different route to her husband, teaming with the poet B.D. Love and putting a selection of his works, written specifically for the project, to music. Unlike Pete’s album, this isn’t a totally solo affair, he contributing guitar and a variety of other instruments, while other guests provide the likes of accordion, piano and strings.
Musically, it occupies different territory too, veering more towards folk and country, the former particularly true of the strummed title track opener, written in accordance with the 15th century poetic style after which it is named, the latter in the Patsy Cline-like piano-backed honky-tonker ‘I’ll Be Alone Tonight’ or in the airy rootsiness of ‘Bicycles (With Broken Spokes)’, the lyrics an extended metaphor for growing old and love fading.
Elsewhere, she paints with different shades, as on the tango meets New Orleans voodoo flavour of ‘She Worked Her Magic On Me’, the accordion backed folksy polka jaunt of ‘Mockingbird’, the traditional folk hues of ‘Soldier’s Wife’, a bluesy, organ-driven ‘Be The One’ that (like ‘Coyotes’) hints of Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac or the strings-enrobed ‘Breathe Deeply, Love’ which puts me in mind of a Welsh hymnal. Then, in complete contrast, ‘Beneath The Mistletoe’ as the distinct feel of a 40s ballroom, while ‘Fireflies’, the only number written entirely by Kennedy, has, with its glockenspiel, swirling effects and pizzicato plucked uke (?), a bewitching air akin to something from the English Renaissance.
As you might imagine, it’s a lyrically intriguing collection, and, while most tend to circle love and relationships (‘I Cried To Dream Again’ even calls upon Caliban’s line from ‘The Tempest ‘to conjure the pain of love lost and found), there are those that touch on different concerns, such as the father-son themed plangent folk-rock ‘Father To The Man’ or, from the other side of the parental fence, the hopes of a poor, single, immigrant mother for her daughter in ‘Borrowed Dress’, arguably the album’s finest moment where, like the songs itself, Kennedy’s pure, clear voice sounds uncannily like vintage Emmylou.
Kennedy set herself an ambitious challenge in taking on a wide variety of poetic style and transforming them into melodies without altering their form, shaping the music to the image rather than vice versa. The result is a triumph and one of the year’s finest releases.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: http://www.kennedysmusic.com/
‘She Worked Her Magic On Me’:
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