A late addition to an already crowded cast, Kathryn Calder joined the New Pornographers in 2005 as a fill-in for Neko Case, who at the time rarely toured with the group. At the time Calder seemed like a mismatch for a group defined by outsized presences: She’s not a born star like Case, nor is she an enigma like Dan Bejar, or a pop savant like A.C. Newman. Her defining characteristic is her ordinariness, but ultimately that’s what has made her such a welcome foil to her colorful bandmates. She grounds the group, and while she may not be a marquee attraction, over their last few albums, her spotlight turns have become reliable standouts.
As with most of her co-leads in the Pornographers, the music Calder releases on her own shares little relation to that band’s escapist pop. For one thing, nobody ever dies on a New Pornographers record. Though its cover promised precious twee, Calder’s 2010 solo debut Are You My Mother? was an emotionally heavy listen shaped by her mother’s battle with ALS. The shadow of death also hung over her more assertive and synth-driven follow-up Bright and Vivid, which added her father to her list of loved ones to grieve.
Death has been such a constant on her solo albums that by now its presence is just assumed. Even though she seldom addresses it directly on her self-titled third album, it’s always there. It’s present in the opener "Slow Burning", when she pleads for help coping with the nightmares that wake her, and it lingers to the very end of "Remembering", when she shares an afternoon in the sun with her lover and sings, "Time will smoke us out but it’s really good to be here just like this."
The album is filled with anecdotes like that, peaceful moments interrupted by reminders of life’s impermanence. It’s as if every time Calder set out to write a love song, she emerged instead with a portrait of survivor's guilt. But even at their most melancholy, Calder’s songs are less concerned with mourning than with living. To judge by these songs, her losses have reshaped her view or the world, leaving her with a Zen-like sense of acceptance. On the jaunty "Take a Little Time", the closest the album comes to New Pornographers-style hookiness, she assures her lover she’s not interested in holding grudges. Even the prospect of romantic failure doesn’t faze her. "If we fall, then we fall," she sings on "Song in Cm".
Like Calder’s previous solo albums, this one was produced with the man she ostensibly wrote many of these songs about, her husband Colin Stewart. But this effort feels distinct from its predecessors, more intimate but also more considered. It does more while calling less attention to itself. Calder often sings in little more than a murmur, as if retreating from the world, and Stewart’s production matches her voice. The understated mix disguises just how much instrumental and textural variation runs through these songs. Save for a few moments when the guitars boil over, the record plays as if covered by a blanket of snow.
Apparently it took some trial and error to capture that delicate mode. In interviews, Calder has described the album as a second attempt, following an LP’s worth of material she recorded then scrapped. That do-over involved writing new songs and rewriting others, but it’s easy to imagine her just re-recording the same album, only quieter. In Calder's songs solace proves elusive and fleeting, but when she finds it, it's always during moments of calm.
