Simple suits Laura Gibson. The Oregonian songstress knows the power a few well-chosen words and clear images can carry-- all the better when complemented with an economy of instrumentation-- and she put this know-how to good use on her two previous solo outings, 2006's If You Come to Greet Me and 2009's Beasts of Seasons. Those records also benefited from their intimacy and frankness, both embodied in Gibson's voice. It's a gentle thing, wise but vulnerable, and it wraps itself around the vowels with a nasal quality that calls to mind the earliest decades of recorded music. That voice returns more versatile than before on La Grande (sorry Francophones, it rhymes with "demand"), which finds Gibson shedding some of her characteristic simplicity, spreading her wings, and trying a few new musical styles on for size in the process.
A newfound momentum is evident from the moment the opening title track rolls in, all galloping drums, see-saw bass, dust-bowl guitars, and spectral moaning. It ain't exactly "Rawhide", but it's a more assertive move than we're used to from Gibson, whose previous records began quietly and gracefully. From there La Grande dips and sways, holes up and sprawls out again, not unlike the rugged terrain of the northeastern Oregon locale from which the album derives its name. Gibson's quiet moments are still her most striking: "Crow/Swallow" comes close to capturing the elegant melancholy of Greet Me standout "Broken Bottle", while on closing track "Feather Lungs" Gibson makes use of a cappella 1940s vocal-group harmonizations to soften the edges of a song plainly about final repose. However it's thanks to more upbeat tracks such as "The Fire", "Skin, Warming Skin", and the aforementioned opener that these more intimate offerings shine in contrast. This, perhaps, is a lesson learned from Beasts, where a stream of pared-down tracks on the record's latter half, while each affecting on its own, tended to smear together in succession.
New sounds of yore continue on "Lion/Lamb", with its bossa nova rhythm, and "The Rushing Dark", which drifts in and out like an old spiritual sung from a passing river barge. "Skin", easily the record's most momentous track, is, appropriately, also its sex jam: Lines about "secrets... hidden in the hems of summer dresses" and leaving "seeds to break and swell" alternate with a rousing wordless chorus of "ooh-ooh-oohs" while our narrator must keep reminding herself, "it's only skin, warming skin, warming skin." Meanwhile, the romance that may well have led to such skin-warming is given its due on "Red Moon", which has Gibson expressing her desire to "drink up" her lover's "poetry" on what sounds like a vintage microphone. This comes served over Latin-inflected guitar and a recurring sample of an old waltz record, all new looks for the usually more restrained Gibson.
Rather than another exercise in genre-dabbling and dilettantism, La Grande succeeds as a cohesive work thanks to the persistence of Gibson's vision. As a songwriter she's preoccupied with those timeless questions of the human condition, but seldom if ever stumbles into pretension or self-satisfaction. Themes of love, loss, regret, and mortality crop up often, and, significantly, they're well-served by the surrounding songcraft. One wouldn't expect Gibson's latest to bowl over any audiophile chasing the wow!-factor, but for the patient, contemplative listener, La Grande-- much like the campfire depicted on its cover-- is a record worth warming to.
