Black Box Theory<\/i><\/a>. Yet none of those musicians worked with Murray in three-dimensional space and time; all of their work was done remotely. This is the Year of the Pandemic, after all.<\/p>\nThing is, you wouldn\u2019t know that if I didn\u2019t tell you (or if you didn\u2019t read the liner notes). The sound and feel of Such Open Sky<\/i> is one of a tight band, a close collective of simpatico musos, doing their thing together and doing it well. From the subtly spaghetti-western guitar tones of \u201cHeat Death\u201d to the reflective melancholy of \u201cLand on Zero,\u201d this is an album that rewards musically and lyrically. \u201cInfernal Machine\u201d has a crunchy roar that begs to be cranked out in a stadium-sized audience (after we\u2019re all vaccinated, o\u2019course). But Murray\u2019s dulcet pipes provide a striking contrast that gives the song its tension.<\/p>\n
Murray takes a slightly unorthodox approach to providing a lyric sheet. Rather than display the words in a kind of meter — with slashes and line breaks to indicate where the phrases end \u2013 she prints each song\u2019s words as its own paragraph. So while there are rhymes, they disappear into the text. The words to her songs read like personal notes written to someone. Herself? An unknown third party? You<\/em>, even? The answer \u2013 probably all of the above \u2013 isn\u2019t really the point. The point (or mine, at least) is that Murray\u2019s lyrics hold up as interesting, engrossing reading, and they work every bit as effectively within the context of her largely minor-key musical vignettes.<\/p>\nAnd for those who might think of Gretchen’s Wheel as a powerpop project, you’ll be pleased to learn that the select coterie of assisting players on Such Open Sky<\/em> includes member of the Posies and Nada Surf. And as good as they are, the resulting album is most assuredly not<\/em> a powerpop effort. It does more than transcend that subgenre’s confines; it confidently leaves them in the dust.<\/p>\nOftentimes when I review an artist\u2019s work \u2013 especially when I suspect that many of my readers may not be familiar with that artist\u2019s music \u2013 I endeavor to lay out some touchstones: it sounds like this artist, it feels a bit like that one, it bears the influence of that other artist, and so on. I\u2019m not doing that here. And it\u2019s not because I\u2019m being cagey. It\u2019s because on Such Open Sky<\/i> \u2013 and more so than ever before \u2013 Gretchen\u2019s Wheel doesn\u2019t easily call to mind anyone else. To be such a true original — and to make music that draws the listener in — is a triumph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Such Open Sky, her latest album as Gretchen\u2019s Wheel, Lindsay Murray takes a turn that\u2019s both darker and more energetic than what has come before. From the opening strains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,62,65,73],"tags":[947,3854],"class_list":["post-20265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-gretchens-wheel","tag-lindsay-murray","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20265"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20455,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265\/revisions\/20455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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On Such Open Sky<\/i>, her latest album as Gretchen\u2019s Wheel, Lindsay Murray takes a turn that\u2019s both darker and more energetic than what has come before. From the opening strains of \u201cYou Should Know,\u201d it\u2019s clear that Gretchen\u2019s Wheel circa late 2020 is a great leap forward. While her previous work has been highly melodic and supremely engaging, there\u2019s a complex weave of emotion here that somehow leaves it all in the dust.<\/p>\n