In the history of breakup albums, Bluebird will likely be remembered as one of the best, even though it doesn’t feel like a breakup album. This record is so very much more than the musical document of an artist working through a painful divorce. Landes’s short-lived marriage to musician Josh Ritter had an emotional end after only 18 months, but — oh, hell. What’s the use in speculating on what causes a breakup between two people, even when those two people happen to be talented singer-songwriters. Shit happens in life. Move on. Landes absolutely shines on these ten stellar tracks, her fifth full-length album.
Images of flight, nature, distraction, hope and rebirth abound, with the opening title track focusing on the delight of spotting a metaphorical bluebird. The minor-chord changes at the bridge tug mightily at that melancholy spot within all of us. The song is pure meditation, a release from a “blue” mood to freedom.
“Try To Make A Fire Burn Again” (probably the most autobiographical of the bunch) looks at both sides of a relationship, the alternating fires of passion and conflict: Getting out of hand, don’t you want to love me all over again/Coming over me, don’t you want to see me, mistreat me.
Landes is such a gifted writer that these songs are in no way cliched, maudlin, poolingly depressing or self-serving. The lyrics are pure poetry, startling at times (Diamond rivers run in streaks down my lover’s cheeks/They run for weeks, and cut so deep) with magic in the details. On “Cry No More” (with Norah Jones on piano and harmony vocals): Feels like waking up/No more sleeping, my heart’s still beating … me up. When she sings of being tracked down by an old friend on “Bloodhound”, the percussion mimics the panting of a dog, and the sparse electric guitar and drum on “Heel Toe” mimic the hollow feeling of a nearly empty dance hall, where injured souls learn to dance (and love) again, slowly at first.
Throughout the album, Landes’s vocals carry the day, undulating between a near-whisper and strong contralto, and with keyboardist/producer Thomas Bartlett (Glen Hansard, Joshua Bell, The National), the piano and string arrangements are subtle and understated, clean yet not over-produced.
All of the metaphors are well-crafted, intelligent, thoroughly engaging and spring from an emotional maturity that is rare these days. The final four songs all have the feeling of lullabies (“Lullaby for Tony” obviously) with the last track “Home” stripped down to gentle piano and vocals only, a clear eye on mortality for the spiritual tumbleweed in all of us: They tell me my time will come when my soul will rise/Over shadow and stone, the final surprise. Home.
Landes’s voice has never sounded better, and this appears to be her finest work yet. Simply gorgeous, all of it.
https://soundcloud.com/western_vinyl/dawn-landes-love-song
