Lynn Miles – Winter

LYNN MILES

Winter

lynnmilesmusic.com

Although I’ve lived all of my life in Canada, where the winters are long and cold, sometimes very cold, I’m not one who has ever warmed to and embraced the season – except maybe when I can listen to a favorite singer sing about it.

Just before Christmas, Lynn Miles, a favorite singer-songwriter, released Winter, an excellent collection of songs set in this coldest and darkest time of the year. Some of them are performed live with a string quartet, some are studio recordings.

While most of the songs are recorded for the first time, a few are reimagined for this set because they fit the theme, including the album opener, “Last Night,” an early song of Lynn’s that beautifully captures the magic of the first snowfall of the season (the only snowfall of the year I would possibly describe in those terms). The song’s lyrics and haunting melody are served so very well by Lynn’s singing on top of a lovely string arrangement.

Other favorites include “The Coldest Winter in the History of the World,” which doesn’t describe this current El Niño winter, but is surely reminiscent of last year when the bitter cold set in early and didn’t let up; “High Heels in the Snow,” a compelling and very sad portrait of a teenaged prostitute who doesn’t make it to Christmas; and “Casino El Camino,” a song about being lonely and far away from home in Texas at Christmas time.

In addition to Lynn’s own songs there is a beautiful version of my late friend Jesse Winchester’s “Wintery Feeling,” a song that so brilliantly captures the scene of a nighttime snowfall in Montreal, the city where I lived for most of my life. I love Lynn’s plaintive harmonica playing on this track.

The five songs at the end of the album, including the already-mentioned “Casino El Camino,” are labelled Christmas. But they're not so much Christmas songs as songs that are set around Christmastime, so I don't get that enough-with-Christmas-already feeling hearing them in January (or, I'm sure, later).

While there is a definite sadness to many of these songs (few singers do sad as well as Lynn) the album ends with “Twenty Pound Turkey,” a really fun rock ‘n’ roll song in which Lynn channels her inner Chuck Berry (with lots of help from Keith Glass on electric guitar).

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Terre Roche – Imprint

TERRE ROCHE

Imprint

Earth Rock Wreckerds

terreroche.com

I first started writing record reviews for the Montreal Gazette back in 1975 and one of the LPs I wrote about that first year – they were LPs in those days, it would be well into the 1980s before CDs came along – was Seductive Reasoning, the debut of a sister duo, Maggie & Terre Roche, built around quirky, affecting songs and terrific harmonies. Later, younger sister Suzzy Roche joined up and they became The Roches, releasing a series of albums between 1979 and 2007.

Terre Roche released her first solo album in 1998 and has participated in several other projects. Imprint, an exquisite album released in 2015, is just her second solo project.

Imprint is an intimate album. It’s just Terre’s voice and guitar with bassist Jay Anderson. Most of the time all we hear are the live-off-the-floor sounds of the voice, guitar and acoustic stand-up bass and the communication between Terre and Jay is remarkable. The voice, guitar and bass weave in and out and around each other in a seemingly effortless way. There are overdubs on some songs – a harmony vocal or second guitar part from Terre and some percussion from Jay that blends in so organically that these parts, too, seem like they’re coming off the floor at the same time.

Terre’s songwriting – she wrote 12 of the 13 songs on Imprint – is also quite remarkable. Her lyrics can be somewhat oblique or abstract on some songs, more straightforward and obvious on others – but they are always captivating, quietly demanding the listener's full attention.

Among my favorite songs is “Tinkle,” a sad, extended portrait of a disintegrating relationship. Jay’s bass playing on this track seems like a human heart beating as Terre sings to a departing lover. Another heartbreaker is “Maxwell,” a poignant elegy for a loved pet cat who has passed on.

While most of these songs seem too quiet and too personal to have been Roches songs, there are some that are reminiscent of the sister trio. I can easily imagine the three of them belting out “Stick Up Hair,” which lampoons a trumpian politician who is “naughty” and “mean” and has “stick up hair.”

“Calabash Boom” and “Waning Cats and Dogs” with their Roches-like overdubbed harmonies also remind me of the trio.

Imprint is the work of a highly creative singer, songwriter and musician. These songs continue to reveal more every time I listen again to the album.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Susie Burke & David Surette – Waiting for the Sun

SUSIE BURKE & DAVID SURETTE

Waiting for the Sun

Madrina Music

burkesurette.com

Susie Burke, a soprano who sounds great whether she’s singing quietly or powerfully, has been on my list of favorite singers for many years while her husband, David Surette, is a sublime master of the guitar and mandolin. They’ve worked together as a duo for more than 25 years and released several fine recordings, including the excellent Sometimes in the Evening, which I reviewed in Sing Out! Magazine back in 2000.

Susie and David’s latest album, Waiting for the Sun, is a fine effort combining four of Susie’s songs with two of David’s – one of them a nifty instrumental – and four well-chosen covers. The 11th track is an alternate version of Susie’s “Give Me Some Hope.”

The album opens with “Give Me Some Hope,” a slightly jazzy blues song that gives Susie an opportunity to belt with the best of them on top of a swinging arrangement featuring some great picking. The alternate take that ends the album is almost two minutes longer giving David, bassist Steve Roy and drummer PJ Donahue even more room to stretch out.

Among the other highlights is Susie’s “April with the Flying Bow,” a joyous tribute to music making and contra dancing that is one of several songs featuring harmonies by daughters Isa Burke and Juliana Burke. Isa’s fiddle playing is also featured on the song. Another is “Like I Used to Do,” a perceptive piece written by Tim O’Brien and Pat Alger about how life changes as we move into and through middle age.

But my absolutely favorite track is the stunning version of “I Turn to My Guitar,” written by my late friend Jesse Winchester. As I noted in my Montreal Gazette review of Jesse’s album, Love Filling Station, the song “captures the feelings that have led to the creation of so much music by so many people over so many years.” Susie’s singing and David’s instrumental work on the song are simply gorgeous.

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--Mike Regenstreif