Louisville-based pianist Rachel Grimes is best known for her work with Rachel's, one of indie's best chamber music ensembles. They were more neo-classical than post-rock, but during their run from the early-mid 1990s to the early-mid 2000s, they seemed to fit nonetheless. Strangely, they weren't named for Grimes, but rather fellow member Jason Noble's Toyota Corolla. Still, she became somewhat synonymous with the band in the minds of its fans, even as she went on to work with King's Daughters & Sons. Book of Leaves, her first solo album, is like a warm embrace from an old friend, carrying on in the same neo-classical vein as her old group, but now with only piano (and a few frogs).
The starkness of the recording is a good match for the snow-covered world outside my window at this writing, but it works regardless of the weather. These compositions came together over years as Grimes has worked with her own bands and as a hired session player, but they have a natural flow from one to the next, with simple themes and chord changes preserving a consistent mood in all of them. One of the most arresting compositions is the second, "Every Morning". It proceeds without fuss through a series of small themes that pulse along, buoyed by dynamic contrast-- her playing mimics an echo. She reprises it with a bit more flourish on the penultimate track, the second time allowing distant bird sounds to mingle with the music.
Across the record she employs other field recordings from nature, though never with a lot of fanfare. The forest full of frogs on "At the Pond" is simply presented as a naturalistic interlude. Even when her animal pals are present, though, Grimes has crafted an album that sounds and feels truly solitary-- the halting chords of "The Corner Room", the frenetic interlocking melodies of "My Dear Companion" (a distant relative of Rachel's "Arterial"), the sudden cascades of "She Was Here", and the chord sheets of "Mossgrove" all have the feel of creativity accessed while in between encounters with other people. That time between is something we all need now and then, and this record resonates primarily because of how well it embodies the nourishment of aloneness.
