Laura Barrett has fully arrived with her new CD “Victory Garden”. While her EPs Earth Sciences and Ursula were both very good there was a sense that she was experimenting and introducing all of us to the kalimba. Now that we know what the instrument sounds like she has moved on and incorporated the african thumb piano (as well as her lovely voice) into fuller, more orchestrated music.
In addition to the kalimba, Victory Garden features piano, xylophone and glockenspiel, percussion brass, woodwinds and strings as well as backing vocals by Basia Bulat. In total Barrett has created something totally her own, reminiscent of nothing except what is going on in her own head but thoroughly accessible and a pleasure to listen to from the first track to the last.
It is impossible to say what sounds we may hear from other artists during the next year but I can already say with certainty that if this brilliant, smart and wholly original album isn’t on the Polaris Short List for 2009 the award (which is supposed to be based solely on artistic achievement) will cease to mean anything.
Here is a bit of what other people think about Victory Garden
Exclaim
“There’s a temptation to compare her to Kate Bush but Barrett is her own woman. Where her introductory EP, Earth Sciences, had people worried that a full-length would be more of the same, but longer, that’s nowhere near the case. … From Veda Hille to Christine Fellows and now Laura Barrett, the literate, vibrant and brave female songwriters of Canada are having a hell of a year. “
“To know Laura Barrett is love to Laura Barrett…Riding high on swoony melancholy and offset by cinematic shimmers of strings and woodwinds, the pervading plunk of Barrett’s kalimba plays like a children’s music box in double time, wisely employed as an accent rather than punctuation. “
“I love Laura Barrett. I really do. But I’ve got to admit was a little skeptical about how well her sound would wear over the course of a full-length album. After all, on her debut EP, the quirkiness (who else plays thumb piano?) was almost as big a a selling point as the songwriting (though she certainly wasn’t hurt by the presence of an unforgettably catchy song like “Robot Ponies”). Would it stand up over twice as many songs and twice the running length?
One listen to Victory Garden shows that the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, if anything, it stands up a lot better, since you have time to get over the novelty of the instrument. Even if you spend the first fifteen minutes being amazed that kalimbas lend themselves so well to pop music, that still leaves you with another eight songs and a half hour to revel in what Barrett has created.”
“Its dreamy, rounding sound weaves with Barrett’s tip-toeing vocal style. But added to the thumb piano on Victory Gardenare orchestral layers of sound: the singer’s own adept piano-playing and other instruments from theremin, autoharp (courtesy of Basia Bulat, who also sings on the album), oboe and viola (provided by fellow Hidden Camera Lief Mosbaugh), cello and brass. Co-producer/arranger Paul Aucoin (Hylozoists) plays vibraphone throughout, too. The singing style suggests the strictly bizarre, whimsical and dallying progress through an imaginary place, a dreamscape or the garden (as depicted on the cover). But closer listening reveals some cutting critiques, skepticism and grounding in the real world—hardly the stuff of the innocent—reminiscent of Jane Siberry. “
As a special treat, because you read all the way to the end, I’ll also mention that I (Heart) Music has posted recordings of a live performance by Laura at this years NXNE.