Cara Luft and JD Edwards have done it again. This a pair of truly brilliant storytellers. Critics have put them up there with Shovels & Rope, and Mandolin Orange as some of the most prestigious contemporary musicians of their genre.
It’s been said many times that a place will make such deep impressions on a person that it can not be helped but to influence their art, and I hear the Canadian landscape portrayed here in all it’s diverse beauty.
The album opens with a heartfelt love song to Alberta that makes even this mountain boy feel a yearning for the prairies. “Johnson Slide” tells the tragic story of the natural disaster that took the lives of a family very close to many of us in this community. In each case, every part in every song has been carefully tailored to best serve the story being told.
Every moment is ripe with emotion and story, in direct lineage from the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. “(Seeger) was the king of uniting people through singing,” Luft says. “There’s so much animosity and divisiveness in our world these days… as artists, part of our job is to somehow create unity.”
Add this to the list of great albums of 2019!
