Oddiyo 2015 / 2018
Vancouver artist’s quiet trip into watercolor wonders of yesterday and tomorrow.
You can’t name your album “Blue Rain” and expect it to catch fire, and Cary Heuchert’s debut didn’t ignite a lot of listeners’ imagination when it first saw the light of day – a rainy day, if you will. Reappearing in a slightly expanded form, the record eventually reveals a warm glow that’s always been there and seems complete now, even though the cello-laden folky murk of “Mirror Of Dreams / Nightbreak” – a newly fashioned finale – shouldn’t have closed the circle. Or cycle, as these songs pivot on calendar, real and imaginary.
There’s mellifluous melancholy to the album’s title track whose tentative caress gradually produces a psychedelic carapace as if to protect Cary’s soft core from the vagaries of external world which would seep in anyway, so what could pass for vulnerability, especially in the translucent “Every Morning Comes” where guitar ripples and flute flutter are so alluring, will turn out to be a secret adventure. Alongside the playful country tincture carrying “Not Just Another Day” through tempo shifts to optimistic, picturesque innocence, and the fully fledged quasi-orchestral phantasm behind “Maoershan” allowing a glimpse of Heuchert’s Mellotron-minded abilities, “Rainfall” may seem monotonous, yet that’s exactly how this sort of precipitation must feel like.
Similarly, the bleak “Winterlude” – grounded with subtle solemnity of piano and organ, and stricken with electric current – outstays its pun-pinned welcome as the season in the number’s heart, but it’s balanced by the reverie sequence: “The Girl Of Dreams” running on raga, “Lost In Your Dream” baring a baroque underbelly and the aforementioned finale bringing gloom into the mix. Simpler strum of “Someday” can betray the artist’s singer-songwriter roots as could the jaunty, joyous “Ode To The Sun” which is deeply indebted to the ’60s – although this can be said about the entire record.
When it rains, it pours, so Cary Heuchert’s sophomore effort must not take long to emerge, and burn brightly.
***