With the current market currently so flooded with strong-willed female artists, you'd be forgiven for asking, do we really need another? But one thing's for certain, space can always be made for someone as talented as Kathleen Edwards.
Her first LP since 2008's Asking For Flowers, the new record Voyageur takes in an expansive sweep of sounds, and even more impressively, is produced by critical darling Bon Iver (aka Justin Vernon). They even recorded a track together, the hauntingly beautiful Wapusk.
And it's this song's organic quality that pervades over so much of Edwards' music - it seems to spring from the very soil itself, a brush of colourful vibrancy bringing life to cold streets and dull skies. New single Change The Sheets is even better, a life-affirming number that builds do a properly rousing crescendo.
Melding radio-friendly traditional singer-songwriter tropes to a more adventurous, ethereal essence, it feels swept up in the raw elemental power of the wind and sea, a fitting taster for an album named for the process of discovery. A voyage into uncharted territory, but one that never feels ill at ease.
Voyageur is released on the 23rd January.
Kathleen Edwards - Change The Sheets by Kathleen Edwards
