Last time around<\/a>, the songs of Lindsay Murray, the singer-songwriter-guitarist known as Gretchen\u2019s Wheel, benefitted from her collaboration with producer Ken Stringfellow of Posies and R.E.M. fame. This time out Murray absorbs those lessons and moves forward on her own, self-producing this relatively brief nine-song, 34-minute album of alternately shimmering and punchy Americana. Another key collaborator does return, as Ira Elliott from Nada Surf is again behind the drum kit, locating smart, tasteful grooves that enhance each of these tracks. <\/p>\nMurray\u2019s memorable voice is once again the center of the action, with a breathy fragility that inevitably reminds of Emmylou Harris, at least until she moves into a pleasantly husky Christine McVie croon. The biggest challenge here as a listener is the overall mood and subject matter, for Behind The Curtain<\/i> is a peek into the mind of a troubled soul, a travelogue of isolation, depression and disillusionment that\u2019s unrelenting even when the music turns sunny.<\/p>\n
Uptempo tunes like the opening \u201cInvisible Thief\u201d marry the sort of jangle and shine you associate with the Jayhawks with an introspective singer-songwriter bent in the vein of Mary Chapin Carpenter. And indeed, this feels like a Carpenter song, a narrator striving to overcome creeping self-doubt: \u201cThe sabotage was coming from inside \/ Wreaking havoc that couldn\u2019t be denied \/ A perfect disguise, a slow and silent progression \/ A lazy march in no particular direction.\u201d \u201cThief\u201d closes with the somber refrain \u201cI only buried my head in the sand because it was too heavy to lift.\u201d<\/p>\n
The steady-on lilt of \u201cYounger Every Year\u201d belies a lyric about being haunted by memories: \u201cI\u2019ll never recreate the tableau \/ Can\u2019t take the emptiness that it shows \/ And now I can feel giving up \/ Coming on again.\u201d This downward-spiraling sensation is only accentuated by the deceptively-titled \u201cThe Good Things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLive Through You\u201d turns up the guitars for a full-on pitched battle with self that begins with the narrator asserting that she \u201cOught to leave the house just to prove that I still can.\u201d The gentle \u201cBirds Of A Feather\u201d and the heavy \u201cPetrified Heart\u201d chart the further course of the \u201ccataclysm\u201d befalling our narrator: \u201c\u2019Cause the passage of time has finally extinguished \/ This petrified heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVapors\u201d chimes and shuffles through layered acoustic and electric guitars decorated by bell-like keyboard tones, another reflection on the slow dissolution of self. Lurking at number eight is a highlight: a propulsive cover of Canadian power-poppers Sloan\u2019s \u201cTry To Make It.\u201d There\u2019s a Gin Blossoms-like aspect to this tune, which marries big guitars and a bouncy beat to a downbeat lyric about someone who needs to be coaxed and lobbied to leave the house at all. Our narrator never makes it that far in the closing title track, which finds her wallowing near oblivion: \u201cI dream of things I\u2019ll never be \/ Seems like a good reason to stay asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
One place where Stringfellow\u2019s influence may have been missed this time around is on the mix, which occasionally obscures the clear star of the show\u2014Murray\u2019s voice\u2014while punching up the guitars and rhythm section. Fortunately this only happens a couple of times over the course of the album.<\/p>\n
Overall, Behind The Curtain<\/i> is a powerful set, a collection that threads melancholy self-examination through a series of shimmery, appealing tunes anchored by Murray\u2019s instantly memorable voice. Count me impressed, again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9594],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-44583","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gretchens-wheel","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44583","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44583"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}