Evangeline Gentle – Evangeline Gentle
Sonic Unyon – 21 August 2020
A year on from its Canadian release, the self-titled debut album from Evangeline Gentle, produced by Jim Bryson (Oh Susanna, Kathleen Edwards), finally heads out into the wider world. There is, inevitably, a temptation to link her surname and the music, but while there are softer ballads, there’s a prevailing spikiness behind the warmth of the arrangements and vocals as she sings of loss, love and liberation.
Case in point is the opening Drop My Name, metallic, echoey bass notes setting the atmosphere before drums putter and guitars chime over which her piercing, vibrato vocals soar with a sharp edge that harks to her Caledonian heritage as much as her Americana inclinations as she declares “I’m nobody’s toy, I’m nobody’s second best”.
Banjo brings a folksier-country feel to Ordinary People, a song about finding the strength to deal with what life throws your way (“it’s brave to be hopeful in this world/it’s brave to be kind”), a hint of Stevie Nicks percolating both through this and the softer scuffs of Sundays, a long song about feeling secure with her emotional anchor even when self-doubts niggle.
There’s a jazzy, slightly Latin texture to the percussive rhythms of dreamy So-Cal flavours of Even If, sitting smoking on a barstool to deliver a confessional about how “Lust is almost never love” as she examines her self-sabotaging habits tendencies and concludes “I’ve got no-one to blame/I sure as hell can’t blame you”.
Another echo of 70s California FM country, So It Goes looks back on more tender years and the bliss of a summer love (“do you think of me when Springsteen is on the radio”) before piano notes and steady march drums introduce the soulful slow waltz The Strongest People Have Tender Hearts, a majestic number about not letting the world make you hard, how showing your feelings is not a weakness.
With its phased keys, Long Time Love initially threatens to develop into some Krautrock rhythm, only to transform into first more of a soulful Nina Simone piano and pulse ballad and then a Nicks-like swirl in a celebration of love “as beautiful as morning frost”,
Acoustic strum leads us into the walking beat of the Mac-shaded Neither Of Use, another number addressing insecurity in relationships (“Trust is a scary thing”) but also the courage to take risks as she sings “neither of us are running”.
Commitment comes with consequences, a theme that underpins the penultimate, hazy snare-brushed sway of Digging My Grave, a love song about running into addictive relationships (“I’ll do anything she asks me”) with your eyes willingly blinded (“I knew there was no hope for me”) because perhaps it’s better to burn for a moment than to be frozen forever.
It ends with the acoustic strum of the hopeful, uplifting Good And Guided, Gentle’s voice nakedly expressive and aching as drums, banjo and piano arrive to fuel the anthemic swell as she declares that while “the heart and the mind are in some way divided…I’ve found myself unguarded and I’ve found that love is there”. Canada has already fallen under her spell, now it’s time to take a cue from John Hartford, and not let yourself be shackled by forgotten words and bonds and the ink stains that are dried upon some line, but listen to her voice and words and have Gentle on your mind.
Buy/Stream the album here: https://linktr.ee/evangelinegentle
Photo Credit: Mark L Craighead