Kele Goodwin — Hymns (2010)

Upon hearing Kele Goodwin, it's hard not to think of Nick Drake. And if you don't pay close attention, it's easy to keep that impression. The music is consistently placid, Goodwin's voice a series of graceful, hushed ripples. But those, of course, are just surface features. These waters run deep, and abound with complexity and life. Where Drake's lyrics are confessional, Goodwin's are self-reflexive. While Drake contemplates his own psyche, Goodwin gazes into a profound, enigmatic world. "There are sails meant never to raise / Never to know the winds," he sings in the title track, "Leaving our ship alone and adrift / Thinking only of where it has been." Not that his music is never personal, of course. But even in a tune about lost love, like "Red String", we find ourselves not in the closed space of a confession booth but somewhere rather more expansive: "The water was dark, but the sunbeam shone bright / And as I dove, day turned to night / The key it sparkled and caught my eye / I grabbed hold and swam towards the sky."

As for Goodwin's singing style, while it does immediately recall Drake, his approach reminds me more of João Gilberto. The vocals are steady and economical, with a cultivated, careful attempt to rein in excess vibrato. He indulges in a bit, just enough to make the songs compelling, but certainly he's at pains to keep from breaking free. The simplicity of the music is also a bit deceptive. The drone underlying many of the songs actually seems to simplify the already sparse guitar. That single, hovering note acts as a base, from which the melody doesn't far depart. The effect is ironically purifying.

The songs themselves are each little myths, filled with talismans & icons, populated by a protagonist with his eyes cast deep into both the past and the future. For mythologists from Lévi-Strauss to Barthes, a defining quality of myth is elements in opposition to each other. We find such elements strewn throughout these songs. Unwanted "paper tears" are saved for ages and fashioned into "warships with fire in their sails." "There's evil in every eye / but love in every face." A key recovered from deep in the sea is immediately thrown back in. Even the simple regrowth of a fallen leaf is imbued with life-sized significance.

If Kele Goodwin's music is not overly dynamic, it is also not the narrow, self-absorbed sort that too often accompanies such an aesthetic. It is music which rewards patient attention.