I cheerily admit to a bias here, right off the bat.<\/p>\n
See, I know Heather Jinmaku. Not well, but I do know her; I
\nfirst saw her sing at Pagan Spirit Gathering 2003 as a beautiful
\nbut nervous young woman with a guitar. She sang at the morning
\nmeeting and absolutely blew my socks off — a neat trick, since I
\nwasn’t wearing socks. She had a magnificent, rich, expressive voice
\nthat could alternately growl like a summer storm and soar like a
\nphoenix. When you add in the fact that she is one of the sweetest
\npeople I know, it would be hard for me to say bad things about her
\nmusic.<\/p>\n
When I went back to PSG this summer and realized she had a CD
\nout, finally, I wheedled myself into a review copy. And guess what?
\nI don’t have to say anything bad, thereby saving myself from a
\nmoral dilemma.
\nThe Balance<\/i>, Jinmaku’s debut CD, is a truly magnificent,
\npowerful and brilliant piece of work.<\/p>\n
Nominally, Jinmaku is a pagan folk artist. However, she has a
\ntendency to veer into blues and rock, and she handles those musical
\nforms with equal aplomb and grace. The production on the CD is
\nelegant, spare, and wonderful, and the musicianship is excellent.
\n(Special kudos to Mark Witters’ guitar on some of the bluesier
\nnumbers, most notably “Ding, Dong, The Witch Ain’t Dead”. Dude can
\nsmoke.)<\/p>\n
There isn’t a bad track on
\nThe Balance<\/i>, but special note should be given to the eerily
\nbeautiful “One Night,” the poignant “Daedalus,” the title track,
\n“Heartfelt,” “Back To Beltane,” the aforementioned “Ding, Dong, The
\nWitch Ain’t Dead” (one of the funniest songs it’s been my privilege
\nto hear in a very long time), and the soaring “Merry Meet,” the
\nCD’s close. I remember falling asleep in my tent at PSG to Heather
\nsinging “Merry Meet” from the stage across the road, and it was
\nmagnificent.<\/p>\n
Heather Jinmaku is a wonder — a gentle, light-filled soul who
\ncan also kick out the jams like nobody’s business.
\nThe Balance<\/i> is a great, great debut, and I look forward to
\nmore from her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":27202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7207],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-38548","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-heather-jinmaku","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38548"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}