Michaela Anne - Desert Dove
Yep Roc Records CD-YEP-2683
****1/2
From the opening notes, DESERT DOVE, Michaela Anne’s third studio album, takes you on a journey spanning fragile stripped-
back confessionals to Americana, to psychedelic-tinged harmony-laden country heartbreakers.
Drawing on life experiences, vintage sounds, and a fresh and vivid imagination,
Michaela serves up astutely arranged ballads imbued with warmth and beautifully crafted imagery. Recorded in California, co-producers Sam Outlaw and Delta Spirit’s Kelly Winrich have recruited some of the West Coast’s most inventive musicians including Kristin Weber (fiddle), Brian Whelan (guitar) and drummers Mark Stepro and Daniel Bailey. The carefully crafted arrangements are marked by an easy-going flow and a sense for melody that is all too often lacking in so much of today’s music.
Her songs have a way of rattling around your head, even when you can’t quite place or remember the lyrics. . Michaela’s unique talent lies in creating delicate yet intense atmospheres that swallow the listener in bliss, while her voice remains a steady link to reality. On the opening By Our Design she dives into lovelorn wistfulness like an Olympian, but there’s also a poignant hopefulness here that tends to radiate from all of her best songs. Recalling her days of growing up as an ‘army brat’, Child Of The Wind is steeped in youth and fear, restlessness and optimism. Michaela uses a bright country-pop palette to unpack the cool, dark haze of being a confused teen going everywhere and nowhere, all at once. It carries with it the precious and generally life-affirming ability to excavate pleasure from pain. That natural restlessness is all there in the infectious Run Away With Me, crystallising and prolonging the most joyous, wondrous moments of our lives, the moments when we truly feel alive and shake off the troubles of the world to escape with the one we care most about.
In contrast, Two Fools opens with sliding steel and honky-tonk piano to create a traditional country sound that is awash with rich, haunting instrumentation and lush harmony to tell a tale of sorrow, sadness and heartbreak. Her haunting singing voice, which twinges and aches throughout, infuses the song with emotion that is at once unnerving and soothing. Fiddle and strident electric guitar set the tone for the sassy If I Wanted Your Opinion. She delivers her message of feminine independence with a swagger and a sure ear for a hook.
The snappy lyrics of Somebody New are refreshingly honest and the instrumentation is clean, subtle and accomplished. The minimal aesthetic and fragility that Michaela presents weighs of a tight grip of letting go of an old relationship and embracing a new romance.
This hybrid of bracing country-pop, intimate country and dusty Americana is invigorating, offering pleasures that are both immediate and lasting. A perfect example of the less is more mantra in operation, the production throughout is poignantly understated to carry Michaela Anne’s mature themes—whether dead-end dreams, romance or regret. With her fragile, yet powerful, arsenal of skills Michaela Anne is surely marked out as a songwriter to truly believe in this year. Truth be told, I can see this album being not only accepted but passionately embraced by a large percentage of country and Americana fans worldwide.
September 2019