Joel Plaskett

Sure as the heart is a muscle made up of chambers, valves and
arteries, beating in all our chests, there will be artists singing
from, of and to the hearts-symbolic in all of us. Before you groan,
give a listen to Joel Plaskett’s Three.

Each of the three discs clocks in around 30 minutes. Over the course
of them, the tall man tells a story of going, being gone and going
back—pausing to consider the associated joy, melancholy and sadness
and the tension of staying to stand ground or searching out beyond Nova
Scotia. At last, the artist draws on his tripartite form: the punchy
troubadour heard on the horn-pecked “Through & Through &
Through,” from disc one and the perky pop of “Deny, Deny, Deny” on disc
three. The acoustic balladeer sings us into stillness, silence, as on
“Heartless, Heartless, Heartless” from disc two; and the roots-rock
romantic on “Sailors Eyes,” with its east coast folk motifs; the moody
electronic beat of “In the Blue Moonlight,” both from disc two, and the
spilling closer on the third, “On & On & On.”

Rose Cousins and Ana Egge, who staggered with an In the Dead of
Winter set in February, sing harmonies and responses and complete the
conversational storytelling that is this fine, defining album.