Artist: Kathy Greenholdt

Artist: Kathy Greenholdt

Links: https://www.facebook.com/kathy.greenholdt

http://kathygreenholdt.com/

With her new album, When You’re Dead, Kathy Greenholdt solidifies her reputation as a gifted vocalist with ruminations on bravery, peace and even God. In Greenholdt's unique brand of Americana-infused folk/pop, her assured vocals shift and shade to fit each song's mood, alternately bringing to mind Lorrie Morgan, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Victoria Legrand. And they're accompanied by the outstanding production and exemplary instrumentation of Dolly Varden's Steve Dawson.

Whether it's with the American roots instruments of "Peace," the mood-defining guitars and percussion of "Moon Song," or the expert vocal intro of "When You're Dead," a song whose deliberate pacing and prominent bass recall the Cowboy Junkies -- Kathy Greenholdt's newest album offers us a chance to pause, and examine our relationship with God and each other.

As an example, the song-writing standout, "Moon Song," opens with simple strumming over which we get the flourish of romantic acoustics and hand percussion -- these are joined by a scene-stealing slide, then a piano. Greenholdt's richly-toned vocals conclude, "I know you’re somewhere / Under these stars / But I just can’t see / The way to your heart." It's an accomplished original that hints at the dream pop of Beach House's Bloom.

Lyrically-speaking, in Greenholdt's narrator's prayer for courage to Joan of Arc -- the French war heroine (and apparently a saint of the Roman Catholic church) -- the narrator humbly beseeches to poetic effect, "Let the others call you crazy / So am I / So am I / Saint Joan, make me brave and bold" ("Prayer To Saint Joan Of Arc"). Likewise, on "When I Dream," we're confronted by words taken from our mouths, "When I dream / I dream so far / Away from what my days are."

In Greenholdt's vulnerable narrators, we see our own insecurities. But it's just her way of saying she's been there.

*** The author of this review, Stephen Adams, plays the repique for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8