CD Reviews
The transitory sprawl of La Grande, Ore. — a place "people usually pass through on their way to somewhereelse" — provides Portland-area folk singer Laura Gibson the inspiration for her most exploratory album yet, La Grande. She is the specter of a modern pioneer woman, neck-deep in finger-picking narratives. With a supporting cast that includes Joey Burns of Calexico, galloping high-noon sounds suffuse the opening title track. Reaching even further from 2009’s Beasts of Seasons, Gibson’s wispy voice — fragile and bare — rises from low-key ballads that toil with old-timey effects, predominantly on The Rushing Hour, a rustic hymnal bathed in vintage-washed record pops and crackles. The album mostly tiptoes, though The Fire lifts the soporific air with rousing pump organ and church-sermon piano, following the bucolic panoramas evoked on Lion/Lamb in which Gibson discloses her most revelatory statement on the LP: "I am not a lamb, I am a lion."
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