LIGHT, AIRY, AND MAGICAL

From Mavis (Strut, 2010)

Ashley Beedle's latest oeuvre (releasing March 2), along with musical brother-from-another-mother Darren Morris, finds the British producer (among other things) bringing a unique idea to the table. Long fans of soulstress Mavis Staples, a maven in her own right of bringing righteous sounds and feelings to vinyl platters, they fell in love with her take on the Bacharach classic “A House Is Not A Home”.

So they constructed a piece of music built around elements from the song and sent it to some fellow friends and collaborators to write lyrics to accompany it. Those lyrics were then recorded, but in an ingenious move on the producers' parts they retooled their backing track for nearly each song by taking various components to highlight over the 11 songs found on this release.

On songs like the beautiful “Puzzles And Riddles,” Beedle and Morris revel in providing a quiet but engaging backdrop that stirs emotions equally in the spaces in between the notes as it does within the notes themselves. Vocalist Ed Harcourt laces a mesmerizing vocal that marries well with the song's style - evocative but understated, enigmatic and comforting.

“Dreamers Interlude,” which appears just past midway through the album, recalls Earl Zinger's spoken word piece in Koop's “Beyond The Son,” with its inquisitive nature. Maybe someone should just record a full album of blokes with an English accent reading over top of soothing melodies? I almost think I'd buy that!

Where the album leads off, it also ends much like Dilla's “Donuts” album's last track, where musically speaking it's nearly the same as its first track that lends to a seamless looping listening experience. Instead of Kurt Wagner singing, however, Edwyn Collins sings an uplifting tune about the power of positive thinking and finding joy in life after a few setbacks in “Feeling Lucky.” Mix in a few time-honored “sha-la-la's” and a guitar solo from his son (in his first recorded output), and you've got a song that brings the album to a nice close It's the sound of winter winding down and spring preparing itself for full bloom.