Joanne Robertson - Blurrr

That Joanne Robertson labels herself a painter as much as she does a songwriter is not incidental. On listening to Blurrr, her ninth album if you are to include the collaborative efforts with Dean Blunt and Sidsel Meineche Hansen, you might contend that they're essentially extensions of the same artistic practice. Or, put another way, she performs as she paints. Over what is now a pretty extensive catalogue, the Glasgow-based songwriter has proven herself particularly prolific at writing a certain type of song, mostly lo-fi, soft-focus but emotionally direct ballads with a distinctly impressionistic quality. Here as always, Robertson makes a strong point of her voice, a dominant factor in the majority of her arrangements, but with results that are often hazy and undefined, her feline-like delivery best suited to communicating a feeling rather than a direct sentiment. That doesn't simply mean you can't quite make out the words (although that is often the case), more that you first feel these songs before you understand them, a reflection, perhaps, of that art theory adage to show and not tell? There's that painter again... Robertson's music is also typically mostly unadorned - that voice, the guitar, the sound of the room they're recorded in. As such, it's interesting to note the presence of cellist/composer/producer Oliver Coates on three tracks here, his contributions subtly expanding the emotional breadth of music that already hits you square in the chest. It proves particularly breathtaking on penultimate track 'Doubt', a song that must surely be considered amongst Robertson's very best - think Moon Pix meets The Redeemer shorn of any irony and, in any just world, the kind of song a certain kind of artist can ride to the moon on. If not the moon for Robertson, she still remains a faraway star.  
 
FFO: Julie Doiron, Mary Lou Lord, Cat Power, Hope Sandoval, Alex G