Nice competent musicianship and a hundred year legacy of pleasant predictable arrangements can be like shackles for songwriters. And so it is that Kathleen Edwards’s Voyageur is a tyranny of jaunty acoustic folk pop, in which potentially interesting ideas are quickly repressed.
You have interesting opening bars featuring discordant electronica and electric guitar (as appear on ‘Change The Sheets’ and ‘Sidecar’)? Well you’re a dangerous dissident! We’d better smuggle you out of the country before the shock troops of acoustic, rhythm section, Chris Rea led-guitarist, and stately organist/pianist arrive.
There are artists who have produced perfect records with meat and two veg ingredients – Aimee Mann, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan. But that’s because their lyrics, vocals and/or melodies are so good that a ground-breaking arrangement would be gilding the lily.
Sadly when it comes to Edwards’s musical tales of heartbreak and loss, the lyrical observations are a bit dull, the vocals unremarkably pleasant and the melodies naggingly reminiscent of better songs by other artists. Some tracks (‘Empty Threat’ and ‘Chameleon/Comedian’) have a jaunty charm, but it isn’t too long before you want to start hiding from the sincerity police. She fares better on slower, more spacious tracks like ‘Soft Place to Land’ and ‘House full of Empty Rooms’, and ‘Mint’ does begin to scale the power pop heights to which she aspires.
In general, however, Voyageur is just too predictable a journey.