Last sighted fronting psych-folk band Offa Rex (AKA the Decemberists), Olivia Chaney returns to minimalism on her second solo album, her dazzling vocals accompanied only by the piano of producer Thomas Bartlett, a little guitar and a few string parts. As with its predecessor, The Longest River, it’s a finely wrought piece of work, with Chaney’s swooping delivery turning songs into dramas.
Like contemporaries such as Laura Marling and Anaïs Mitchell, Chaney is steeped in folk tradition but not confined by it. Shelter’s eight original songs owe more to Joni Mitchell’s Blue than to Broadside ballads, while its two covers are Henry Purcell’s O Solitude, a reminder of Chaney’s classical training, and Long Time Gone, penned by “singing cowboy” Tex Ritter and brought to perfection by the Everly Brothers.
The ravages of love are never far away – Arches, with its aching challenge to ‘hold me down or let me go’ is a standout – but refuge and reflection provide the major themes. The album was written in a remote Yorkshire cottage after a bruising tour schedule, yet while House on a Hill celebrates the “shining mystery” of nature, modern urban life is dissected in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with its “tenement fairytales”. An elegant, luminous album.
