Voyageur
Kathleen Edwards co-produced her fourth album with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, jettisoning country rock in favor of gauzy production and a band that includes Vernon plus members of Megafaun, Francis & the Lights, and Peter Wolf Crier.
On her fourth LP, singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards gets an assist from her new beau, Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon, who adds lush arrangements to her tales of heartbreak and anguish, inching her development forward even if the results are, ultimately, uneven. At its best, the fuller production adds heft to…
Singer/songwriter Kathleen Edwards has different kinds of traveling in mind on her album Voyageur.
The fruits of a few years' absence and an ongoing collaboration with Bon Iver figurehead Justin Vernon, Voyageur presents a more developed, confident, and articulate Kathleen Edwards. Recorded at Vernon’s studio – a converted family home – in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, the location certainly seems to have lent itself to the Canadian songwriter's state of mind, which builds and elaborates upon the domestic relationship themes of 2008’s Asking for Flowers.
The persona Edwards creates over the course of the album is consistently hamstrung by doubt and hesitation.
Although a relatively new name around these parts, Kathleen Edwards has been alt-country’s nearly girl for almost a decade in her native Canada (as well as the doyenne of many campus radio stations across the States). But praise goes much further. Dylan likes her almost as much as Sheryl Crow, the Stones have had her on tour and in fact almost everyone who listens to her enjoys the way she injects warmth and lightness into musical styles normally bowing under the weight of earnestness. Voyageur, her fourth LP, has an even easier manner than before.