Some people feel most alive in April, when everything's blooming and heavy with pollen, or in July, when the heat forces off the shackles of human decency and frees us to loll around in full flesh. But I imagine Sera Cahoone is more of a September person. Something about this month, like her songs, is so beautiful and so sad and so right. It's a tricky balance, this feeling. On Cahoone's first two records, quietly released by Sub Pop in 2007 and 2008, she almost got there; the songs were woozy and weary, reckless and heartsick. (Earlier, she'd played drums with Seattle band Carissa's Wierd, which spun off Band of Horses; she played on BoH's 2006 debut, too.) But her new record, Deer Creek Canyon, finds her turning a corner.
Cahoone keeps close to a standard core of acoustic guitar, drums, and some very faint bass; a banjo makes its way into most of the tracks, and strings sidle up sometimes too, joined often by a wiry pedal steel. Her voice is familiar in flashes-- shards of Gillian Welch and Jenny Lewis and Sarah McLachlan occasionally catch the light, then flicker away-- but mostly it sits in a set-jawed, dusky register. It's stronger on this album, richer, more sure of itself through practice or sheer will. She even vocalizes carefully, saving her "ooohs" to accentuate particular lines ("I'm feeling naked," "Feel like I waited all night for you") like little shivers of pain or joy.
These are songs that touch on the difficulty in finding certainty and resolution. "Naked" is a dispatch from some emotional no-man's land ("Until it's right for now/ I don't want you around") and the title track, a hometown ode ticking along like a slow-moving mountain train, could be about either familial or romantic love. Cahoone has a way of lasering in, of making one image or feeling the focus of a song, while allowing herself room to dress the scene. "Here in your house, it's been a while/ All the trees and weeds are overgrown," begins "Rumpshaker", and the reunion's only downhill from there ("For years I bent the way your wind would blow/ Then you turn around and say I didn't give enough"). "Shakin' Hands" is more hopeful, though it may well be a flashback to how the previous affair began: "My friends are all here having a good time, but I just want to get lost in you/ For days."
Even when she's consumed with longing, her demands are direct: arms around waists, hands running down spines. Deer Creek Canyon is a deft fine-tuning of her meandering rustic tendencies, the tweaks so minor and carefully placed they're at first nearly imperceptible. But there's a stronger focus to the collection, a sense of tones and textures chosen carefully and wisely. But for all the forthrightness, there's something a bit askew about Cahoone's delivery, as if it's not directed to a specific listener or any particular "you" but instead something overheard-- from another room, perhaps, or through a screen door open on some late-September afternoon.
