With second album, Sara Swenson gets ‘All Things’ Right
By DEREK DONOVAN
The Kansas City Star
“All Things Big and Small,” local singer/songwriter Sara Swenson’s follow-up to her eponymous debut LP, is a quiet and assured little stunner. After her first record’s study in tidy songwriting and folksy restraint, Swenson has opened her sound with expanded instrumentation and a matured vocal delivery that perfectly suit her brand of airy folk.
Swenson’s breathy, beautiful voice and yearning melodies often recall Sarah McLachlan, but without the affectation that’s become McLachlan’s signature. Swenson can pull off plaintive as well as she can plain.
The album starts with the gentle guitar strums of “While I Drove the Roads.”
“You were what I needed,” Swenson lilts to the accompaniment of slowly chiming snares and arpeggios.
“Snow” is a pretty, evocative number minimally arranged with an upright piano and barely there mellotron vibes adding subtle texture to Swenson’s sense-memory poem about closed roads and boots by the door.
“Passing Cars, Passing Time” jaunts along with an idiosyncratic vocal delivery and shuffling tempo, underscored with haunting swells of steel guitar and a thin, reedy organ. The percussive groove builds through the song, breaking down midway for a short, ghostly interlude, before coming back strong to play the travelogue out.
“Lights Brighter” begins in a dialed-down Ani DiFranco style of (comparatively) assertive guitar and confessional lyric of heartache and regret. “Sometimes I wish I could take my heart out, and put it on the shelf /Just to let it rest for a while/’Cause I love you till it hurts for better or worse,” she sings, the fatigue palpable.
A roaming lead guitar brings a bit of suitable disorder to “Messy Love,” with a vocal that hits way up in front of the mix, putting Swenson right in the middle of the listener’s ear. But on the closing title song, a quiet, tiny piano accompanies Swenson’s most intimate performance as she assures someone — a lover, a baby? — that “all things big and small remain just as they should/Hush now.”
The album was recorded in Nashville, Tenn., with Don Chaffer’s tasteful production underlining Swenson’s strengths but never getting in the way. The musicianship is consistently high throughout the record, with particularly noticeable contributions from guitarist Jeff Larison and multi-instrumentalist Chaffer. Even the hazy watercolor-and-pencil packaging by Jeremy Collins is tasteful and polished.
“All Things Big and Small” delivers on its titular promise. The “bigger” part of that equation isn’t always better in this genre — but it works this time.
Link to article in The Kansas City Star