Sharon Lang’s debut album, Lovers And Thieves, delivers a salvo of well-nurtured songs from start to finish. The writing and playing from the album are clearly a genuine fusion of heavy mind and musical matter. The skill with which Lang provides the layers of guitar work and vocal harmony on the album assume veteran of the recording studio status. Also credited for instrumentation are John DePriest on banjo, Lyndsay Pruett on violin, and Josh Minyard on percussion. The production's sound is perfected by Nashville engineer David Axelrod--every nuance native to a soft world; every note, beat, and word hailing an earnest intention.
The world of Lovers And Thieves is filled with rhythmic and moving overtones deep as the sea of sound one could only imagine in dream. The arrangements are fantastic, leaving us swimming in the scatterbrained scatting of a jazz singer in an all-night movie house, surrounded by French immigrants roaming the aisles in straight lines, bent for love, strutting to the music. The album’s every cadence invokes Mississippi riverbeds, green with the thoughtful tinkering of an age-old banjo, speaking ohm, and creating wisdom. It is old America, recalling Lang’s Atlantic shore roots as the siren, seducing us into the undertow of ghostly beats signifying true heart. It represents new America, calling to mind ancient warehouses, knee-deep in rodent occupation, and sweet, sentimental song sung beneath an over-bearing tide in the cities of this country.
I’m hungry. Needless to say, I think we all are. We’ve been over-saturated and country-fried for too long. Only so often do we find the bare-boned meals to indulge our pains and sorrows of wailing hunger. But fear not neighbor, for grace has entered the yard and delightful, mysterious sounds have seen light in our midst.
It is on the song “Gypsy Sluggards,” that our lady speaks the word renaissance. She says, “Come create, appreciate the arts fermenting in enlightenment. Now gather round the fire, grab an instrument.” Words that remind us of Nashville nights spent outfitted in subterranean garb, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, singing together…moments we all cherish. These are the times we live in, but sometimes, for the memory of what it feels like, it takes a record like Lovers And Thieves to fully encapsulate them. ~Oscar C. Anthony the (rabbit) press
(Lovers And Thieves available July 1st 2009!)
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