Intermittently and indeed very much occasionally an element of overly earnest solemnity seeps into the work as on the segueing Chameleon Comedian on which Edwards draws an explicit parallel between she and said reptile, extended metaphor culminating in the line: "I just hide behind the songs I write." Although this may have rung true with previous efforts, it's the almost painstakingly plaintive and moreover plain sentimental feeling that gushes throughout that sets Voyageur apart and subsequently ensures Chameleon Comedian perceptibly stands out, and does so quite incongruously. To clog and clot this free-flowing exposing of wounded sentimentality thus seems counterintuitive, and its precise and consistent circulation is once again arrested on agonising closer For The Record: hung, drawn, and quartered over seven-odd minutes, Edwards' lamenting of being left "out to die in the sun", condemning allegorical crucifixion for purely wanting "to sing songs" seems an exercise in hyperbole, in literary excess. While she may contend that her "blood is thick but it still runs" – thus effectually protracting this particularly overelaborate metaphor we're here perpetuating – it's an agonising overdramatising of a track that's otherwise, musically, quite impactive as wispy guitars wrangle the churchly warble of an organ seated deep within the mix.
Notwithstanding the odd moment of the lackadaisical and/ or somber however, the journey one assumes once aboard Voyageur is oft igniting and momentarily heart-racing: the expeditiously-paced anthemia of Change The Sheets injects gusto into the guts of the LP, and provides a continuous climax of clattering drums, battered cymbals and reverberating guitars that ring out as if pleading to be airlifted out of this mélange of glorious despondence. Similarly the retro rock stomp of Mint works understated wonders, while the Sarah McLachlan-like Pink Champagne sounds perfectly deflated as it quietly crescendoes. However in amongst it all are two contrasting pieces to laconically (and therefore efficiently) demonstrate Edwards' finely tuned craft, besides her capacity to vibrantly picture the gravely dismaying and the truly jubilant or, effectively, the highs and lows of love: the ecclesiastical hues and lyrics of desperate loneliness within her House Full Of Empty Rooms are soon finely offset by the stentorian thrums and yet another barnstorming chorus during the bright, breezy, and barnet-dishevelling Sidecar.
Bon Iver and Norah Jones are in there somewhere too, but then you knew that already. Edwards knows you already know too. She remembers and respects that; she recognises she's lucky to have been granted an opening into your life. Yet we too ought to appreciate and usher her in for we're lucky to have been proffered a record so fraught with raw desolation, with the outpouring of an agape heart, its contents here rattled and emptied, strewn like the contents of an upturned suitcase on inhospitably firm flooring. Wherever Kathleen may reside, keep Voyageur close at hand.
