Not unlike our recent look back at Toronto band Deloro’s 2011 self titled album, we revisited Jennifer Castle’s solo record from that same year, the lovely Castlemusic.
Castle's successor to that record, Pink City, is an absolutely stunner. Gentle rolling guitar, Owen Pallett’s lush string arrangements and Castle's voice - an indefinable thing that is at once fragile, delicate and rugged - are just some of the elements that made that collection of pastoral folk songs one of our favorite records of 2014. As an album, it deftly framed Castle as a twenty-first century aesthete, navigating the ghosts and discarded palm fronds of 1970s Laurel Canyon.
Taking nothing away from that record, Castlemusic is just as sturdy and surely suggests the forthcoming majesty of its follow-up. But there’s a thicker air of dust on this lp accompanying Castle amongst her explorations of existential heartbreak. The opening “Summer” finds Castle in a thick, murky atmosphere, the humidity rising and reverberating off the guitar with Castle’s cooing getting lost in the echo. The stunning and unparalleled “Powers” follows the blossom and subsequent decay of nature. Her weary voice travels beside deep rumbling guitar, airy flute and distant echoes of drum.
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