Cowpunk, chanteuse, pop crooner, cover artist: K.D. Lang has hung out her share of stylistic shingles over the years, the one constant being her outsized personality and frequently outsized voice. Watershed has no such obvious selling points, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its high concept. A collection of languid, meditative, naturalistic ballads, it’s the first album by Lang that she produced on her own, playing everything from guitar and keyboards to harp, banjo and drum programming.
It’s a handsome production, full of lovely touches. The way the full-hearted strings (arranged by Teddy Borowiecki) melt into Greg Leisz’s swooning pedal steel guitar on “I Dream Of Spring” is…well, dreamy. There is no more sensual bass player in pop music than David Piltch, who can express more feeling in two notes than most bassists can in 40. New age trumpeter Jon Hassell enhances one track.
But for all its beckoning qualities, Watershed never really grabs the listener. As on some of Elvis Costello’s recent albums, the songs tend to blend together, a matter of the artist putting too much stock in literate words and not enough stock in strong, catchy melodies. Lang says this album is “a little bit of jazz, a little country, a little of the Ingenue sound, a little Brazilian touch.” But she mutes her personality so much in trying to “find myself and what I became,” those styles get muted as well.
