Laura Barrett
Victory Garden
(Paper Bag Records)
This is the promised full-length album hinted at on Laura Barrett’s previous EP, Earth Sciences, from February of this year. The off/on player in The Hidden Cameras wields her trusty thumb piano once again, but more sparingly, though the opening notes of the album opener “Wood between Worlds” comes from the instrument, also known as either the kalimba or the lakembe. 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. Victory Garden highlights include “Chidiya” and “Rien à Déclarer.” Laura Barrett plays this year’s Halifax Pop Explosion and should not be missed.
–Sean Flinn
categories: Coast pick,Canadian artist
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2008.
