{"id":45543,"date":"2019-02-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/in-the-clear\/"},"modified":"2019-02-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T00:00:00","slug":"in-the-clear","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/in-the-clear\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Clear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing about music is like writing about a magic show. I can describe what I saw and heard, I can describe how it makes me feel, and I can make some guesses as to how it was created, but there\u2019s a part of it that will always be a mystery. And that\u2019s what makes it special.<\/p>\n

The above paragraph showed up unbidden a couple of years ago and I\u2019ve been waiting ever since to figure out where it belonged; turns out I\u2019d had a premonition of Canadian singer-songwriter Suzanne Jarvie\u2019s new album In The Clear<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Jarvie seemingly came out of nowhere in 2014 with her debut album The Spiral Road<\/i>, winning a 2015 nomination for Best Concept Album from the Independent Music Awards. In the process she was compared with the likes of Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, and these reference points are good ones; at times her deeply personal country-folk tunes seem to marry Harris\u2019 pure, captivating tone with Williams\u2019 lacerating lyricism, a poet whose words cut smoothly right to the bone. (Personally, I hear Mary Chapin Carpenter in there as well.)<\/p>\n

In The Clear<\/i> opens up with \u201cHeadless Rider,\u201d a full-bodied allegory about love replacing fear that immediately showcases Jarvie\u2019s strong, clear, gorgeous vocals. The quieter yet even more untethered \u201cCarpenter Bay\u201d features subtle electric guitar, beautiful harmonies from Jarvie\u2019s daughter Sara, and a honey-pure lead vocal that invites you to fall into its surrealistic story.<\/p>\n

Jarvie detours into a tasty, powerful electric blues for \u201cPoint Blank,\u201d featuring label mate Hadley McCall Thackston<\/a> on harmony vocals, before the luminous title track arrives. \u201cIn The Clear\u201d heads out West for an old-school country tune that\u2019s simultaneously a metaphorical, metaphysical journey about seeking grace and peace in the midst of chaos. <\/p>\n

Whatever the musical frame constructed by Jarvie and producer Hugh Christopher Brown (Thackston, David Corley, Stephen Stanley Band), the focal point is always Jarvie\u2019s pure, pealing voice. The second half of the album offers jazz-inflected Americana (\u201cThe Core\u201d), more traditional country-folk (the dusty \u201cMatryoshka\u201d), the pretty ballad \u201cAll In Place\u201d (featuring the great line \u201cYou pretend and forget, you make friends with regret\u201d) and the deceptively plaintive \u201cYou Shall Not Pass.\u201d The latter is a gently shuffling lament with a very traditional feel that finds Jarvie laying down the law in a voice that\u2019s all at once perfectly calm and full of steel. When she sings \u201cYou shall not pass,\u201d there\u2019s no anger in it, just an absolute assurance that she is stating a fact.<\/p>\n

Closer \u201cTrilogy\u201d is another highlight, a flowing, three-segment, nearly nine-minute suite that opens as earthy country-folk before gathering drive. Strings enter in the middle section as the song begins to lift off; when the horns come in for the final section it all starts to feel rather Van Morrison, that rumbling, tumbling, mystical\/soulful folk-rock thing, a powerful ending for both the song and album.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to delve deeper here into the origins of these songs\u2014the backstory is easily discoverable elsewhere\u2014but in this case, to me, it feels a little like revealing the secret behind the magic. I\u2019d rather just say this: like so many of the truly gifted artists before her, Jarvie has unlocked the deepest magic of all: transforming pain into art. In This Clear<\/i> is a shining example of music as a healing force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10320],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-45543","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-suzanne-jarvie","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45543","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=45543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51958,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45543\/revisions\/51958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45543"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45543"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}