Dark Rivers, Friendly Ghosts

Haroula Rose’s second full-length album, Here the Blue River, drinks deep from literature; its title comes from Emerson’s poem “The River,” and the original spring of inspiration, as it were, was novelist Bonnie Jo Campbell’s book Once Upon A River, for which the multi-talented onetime Fulbright scholar Rose has written a screenplay that she’ll also direct. It’s a beautifully textured album, as delicate as it is intricate, and otherworldly enough to bring to mind even more literary rivers like Lethe or Styx, where you sip your way to oblivion or cross over to a darker, unknown world.

That effect comes partly from Rose’s gift for restrained narrative work, her sure hand at weaving lyrical fragments that linger and intrigue like half-heard promises. It also comes from more ambitious production and fuller instrumentation than on her 2011 debut, the subtle, melodic acoustic guitar-driven These Open Roads. 

Dark, weird organ and layered vocals haunt the lush “Sirens.” Electric guitar and keyboards bounce under the springy, poetic whimsy of “Moon and Waves” (“In a cape of stars that seem the same / Does the moon know each one by name?”) The scope of “The River (Drifting)” is positively cinematic, with its silent-movie creeping strings and foreboding echoes.

These are friendly ghosts. Come closer, and let them whisper in your ear.