Snowpoet: Heartstrings

Snowpoet, led by the creative partnership of Lauren Kinsella and Chris Hyson has been releasing reliably engaging, curious music since 2014's self-released Butterfly. Heartstrings, their fourth full length record, was written through a series of group improvisations from which the ten songs here grew.

Moving away from their accustomed writing habits was a bold decision considering the strength of their carefully crafted writing in the past. Regardless of approach, Heartstrings opens on reassuringly familiar ground. Hyson's harmonic sense and production are recognizable within the first few bars.

The lyrics are pretty direct and feel rather as if they are spoken straight to camera in a slightly unsettling way. "Tenderness" opens the record with a simple piano line and a gentle description of a mother adoring her young son, and from there grows into a restrained epic. "New Tree 109A" is a disarmingly frank and affecting first-person account of a funeral. Although each is written from a perspective not necessarily the author's, they feel very personal. At times, discomfortingly so. Listening is an intimate experience.

Kinsella is blessed with a wonderful voice and one of the strengths of this record is that she is surrounded by very good musicians who support and complement her singing without ever overwhelming or obscuring it. Kinsella has the gift of seeming to sing effortlessly, following her voice where it takes her. At their best, those journeys are a joy. That is not to undermine the musicianship at all; "forest_bathing" is a fabulous showcase for Hyson's piano playing, evoking Ryuichi Sakamoto as much as Eric Satie. "Skin" showcases ensemble playing of empathy and insight, everyone contributing just the right thing at just the right time.

The spoken word in music is a spice to be used sparingly. There are few vocalists who can deploy the spoken word as effectively as Kinsella—"It's Already Better Than OK" from 2018's Thought You Knew (Edition Records) is a bravura tightrope-walk between poetry and song, with joyous bursts of melody erupting unexpectedly from her lilting spoken delivery. Here, "Living to Live" is entirely spoken word and has impact, coming across like a short story set to music. "Skin" blends singing and spoken voice in a way that feels natural and which serves the music. However, when it crops up elsewhere on the record, and it crops up a lot, the spoken word can start to jar a little.

Snowpoet describe themselves as being "jazz-adjacent." Just how adjacent differs from track to track here but really, who cares? Charles Mingus thought that describing music as jazz was limiting and he probably had a point. Despite the writing process of this record being more organic in nature, it feels far from thrown together and has a rich, layered production that at times feels more adjacent to Sade's quiet storm than it does to the jazzier roots evident in the earlier Snowpoet records. For clarity, that is not a criticism.

This is not a record without quirks, and how easy those will be to live with in the long term, only time will tell. It is a grower, though, and repeated listening, especially through headphones, quickly allows the record to come into greater focus. A very rewarding listen.