Pieta Brown – Remember the Sun

The first thing you notice is the sound. Low rumbling guitar chords, sighing violin or viola, a pulsating, pounding drum beat. Pieta Brown, in partnership with guitarist Bo Ramsey, knows how to make records that breathe with emotional resonance.

Then there’s her singing. Over the course of four albums now, you can hear her getting more and more comfortable as a vocalist. She knows her limitations and where the notes are less likely to be hit straight on target. She has figured out how to work around this, how to use phrasing to enrich a simple melody.

Finally, there is the songwriting. Brown captures feelings through somewhat oblique and personal images combined with universal ideas. Thus we get the yearning of “West Monroe” for an escape from an all-too-familiar life; we are given the quiet contemplation of “Song For A Friend”, in which we can never tell whether the friend exists outside of her mind; and we are knocked down by the intense passions of “Sonic Boom” as Brown tries to figure out just what happened when she got that close.

Most of all, we are entranced by the absolutely perfect “In My Mind I Was Talkin’ To Loretta”. Here, as Ramsey plays a twangy guitar lick, we are set up to ponder the relationship of real life to that of song, and how much easier it is to listen to a wonderful old record than it is to contact an old friend.

Of course, the record just might offer more sense of connection. That’s a big part of the mystery of music, which Brown delivers here with greater clarity than she has to date.