release date: Feb. 11, 2022
format: digital (13 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,70]
producer: Anna-Lynne Williams
label: self-released - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Open Ocean" (4 / 5) - 2. "Slip" - 3. "Weaving" - 5. "Colors That Did Not Exist" - 8. "You Must Have" - 12. "Fade Away" - 13. "Inside of Love"
Solo album by Lotte Kestner (aka Anna-Lynne Williams), former songwriter and vocalist in Seattle folk-quartet Trespassers William, a band which after years with an ever-changing line-up ended up as the duo-project by the only lasting members: Williams and composer / guitarist Matt Brown. After the split from Brown, Williams had a short stint and made two albums with Ormonde - another duo-project (this time with Robert Gomez) - she then concentrated on her already highly original solo career as Lotte Kestner (debuted with China Mountain in 2008).
Lost Songs appears to be her seventh, eigth or ninth solo album. It's not the easyist task to enlist her solo albums. Some releases are pure cover albums, some are alternate mixes, remixes, and with titles like Solo Versions (2017) and Other Versions (2018) it's rather hard to distinguish what's really new releases in a traditional sense. And Lost Songs follows this pattern by both being a studio album of 13 tracks but also a collection of songs composed over [what I read somewhere is] a ten year period. On previous releases Kestner has made it a bit of her thing to do cover versions, and on this you'll find two songs: "Everything I Wanted" by Billie Eilish and "Inside of Love" by Nada Surf.
Kestner's trademarks are slow to very slow folkish material held in lo-fi productions, typically arranged with Kestner's gentle vocal accompanied by the strumming of a guitar and at times with occasional accompanying piano, backing harmonies and soft percussion. Several passages brings to mind folk traditonalists as Joni Mitchell and / or Emmylou Harris, although Kestner's songs are not exemplified entirely by stunning vocal range or the strengths of vocal performances - instead it dwells on a narrow palette of grey colours and emmotional melancholic sensation. That may not sound impressing as such, but Kestner does what she does without much fuzz and still the end result is quality music.
I enjoy this quite a bit, only, at times I find somewhat narrow with little variation but it's all done with artistic conviction.
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[ HeavyPop (German) 7 / 10 stars ]
