Lullaby Baxter Garden Cities Of To-Morrow CD - Import

Canadian singer's smoky, jazz-tinged alto returns with a new album, more mature and sophisticated, and which travels between lilting jazz, smoky torch songs, and gospely soulness.

Personnel: Lullaby Baxter (vocals); Judith Armistead (violin, marimba, timpani); Amy Leonard (viola); Ann Chabreck (flute); Mike Bucalo (flugelhorn); Paul Tassin (vibraphone, marimba, timpani); Fraser Stowe (drums, djembe); Jeffrey Clemens (drums); Christy Sumner (hand claps); Susan Cowsill (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Mark Alan Miller.
Photographer: Claudine Sauvé.
Arrangers: Ben Sumner; Peter Baldwin.
Named after an early 20th-century manifesto by Ebenezer Howard about the importance of creating planned communities, this intriguing album is a garden of delights itself, with droll songs written and sung in an engaging cabaret-pop style by Canadian singer-songwriter Lullaby Baxter. Here you'll find weird bossa-novas ("Rattled Little Clam"), dreamy pop songs ("Little Song"), and other laid-back styles, intoned in Baxter's luxurious alto.
On Garden Cities of To-morrow, Lullaby Baxter jettisons the quirky jazz approach that served her well on her first album in favor of a lush chamber pop sound that suits her sweet vocals and cheerfully daft lyrics perfectly. As produced by Hercules (a duo who released the underrated gem In the Alleyway in 2004), the record is a laid-back, layered masterpiece of shoestring studio wizardry. Every song has impeccably blended instrumentation, subtly dynamic shifts, and exactly the ornamentation the tune calls for whether it be the sad trumpet on "Little Song," the jangling guitars on "Sugar," or the swooning flutes on "Lord, I Won't Fight You Anymore." Elsewhere there are swells of organ, shimmering strings, all manner of junior-high-approved percussion, and rich layers of backing vocals that make these simple and charming melodies come to life. Baxter's breathy vocals (which call to mind Colin Blunstone in makeup and heels) recline upon these pillow-soft creations like a graceful seraph. Although you have no doubt she could belt these songs out like an AmIdol hopeful, she wisely chooses to under-sing everything, sounding lazy, sexy, and so close you could reach out and hug her. Indeed, listening to the record on headphones is an almost unbearably intimate experience. Thanks to songs as memorable and flat-out lovely as "What's Wrong with You," "Cardboard Armoured Car," and "Dumptruck," though, it's an experience you'll want to have repeatedly. ~ Tim Sendra