Snowpoet: Thought You Knew
Edition Records

Though Snowpoet's second album is but a half-hour in length, its impact isn't diminished by brevity. The London-based outfit's show-runners, singer/lyricist Lauren Kinsella and multi-instrumentalist Chris Hyson (credited with electric bass, double bass, piano, and synths on the set), are experts in the art of songcraft, and the arrangements fashioned for Thought You Knew are consistently strong. To that end, they're helped greatly by the contributions of Josh Arcoleo on saxophone, Nick Costley-White on acoustic guitar, Matt Robinson on piano, and Dave Hamblett on drums, plus those of guests Alice Zawadski (violin), Francesca Ter-Berg (cello), and, on three songs, Lloyd Haines (drums, percussion).

However compelling Snowpoet's sound is as a collective, its not-so-secret weapon is clearly Kinsella, who's got one of those one-in-a-million voices that captivates the moment it arrives. Like Portishead's Beth Gibbons and Broadcast's Trish Keenan, her effortlessly natural vocal stylings are Snowpoet's difference-maker, and it comes as no surprise to learn she was recognized as 2016's Jazz FM Vocalist of the Year (Kinsella even sounds a bit like Keenan during the nature-infused reverie “Water Baby”).

Musically, Snowpoet traffics in a refined blend of acoustic folk and jazz, though elements of classical and electronic music work their way into a few songs, albeit subtly. The album's song-based character situates it within the singer-songwriter tradition, especially when the material's so melodious and the tasteful arrangements work to support the vocalizing. As critical as Kinsella's vocals are to the recording, no amount of great singing ever compensates for sub-par material, but that's hardly the case here. She and Hyson penned eight of the ten songs, with the others covers of Gillian Welch's “Dear Someone” and Emilíana Torrini's “Snow.”

By introducing the recording with a particularly ravishing example of Kinsella's gifts, the track sequencing supports the prominent role her singing's accorded in the presentation of the group's sound. The graceful, pitch-perfect arc of her acrobatics in the beautiful opener “The Therapist” makes abundantly clear from the outset that it's her presence that most argues on Snowpoet's behalf, even if the acoustic arrangement is as distinguished. With her backing vocals amplifying the effect and the music rising to a glorious swoon as it approaches the second-minute mark, the song sets the bar extremely high for those that follow.

Entrancement sets in again during the insistently swinging, jazz-and-soul-inflected “Love Again” when Kinsella coos its “We can love again / We can love again” refrain over and over. After its T.S. Eliot-styled opening (“The end was in the beginning”), “Pixel” proves as transporting, especially when the arrangement features strings and, in a memorable touch, Arcoleo and Robinson doubling up on a melodic line. A mid-album foray into stylistic territory more associated with The Four Freshmen occurs when Kinsella performs the wistful ballad “Dear Someone” in a harmonies-rich a cappella form, whereas “It's Already Better Than Ok” similarly surprises in exchanging conventional singing for sprechstimme, with Kinsella musing extemporaneously about love and its manifold trials and tribulations.

August 2018