Joanna Chapman-Smith – Contraries

I can’t imagine something more different from a record loosely based on William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Peppered with sultry-sweet a cappella and vocals so pronounced they could be read from a musical, and touching on every genre found between jazz, the blues and folk, Joanna Chapman-Smith’s Contraries is anything but the “perilous path” Blake preaches in his infamous book. In fact, it’s more of a serene stroll.

The not-so-concealed clue is in the title; as with Blake’s piece, this album deals in contraries of temperament, want, and ultimately human nature. From longing to travel and becoming lovesick for her hometown in ‘Urbanity’, to the problematic yet whimsical bounce of ‘A Glass of Right & Wrong’, the album is littered with qualms of the heart. Although present lyrically, the theme is hardly overwhelming, and if it weren’t for the title I’d find myself struggling to make a decent comparison to the Pre-Romantic.

In terms of style there’s a turning point with ‘Between the Minds’, which cements nearing the end. The songs that precede the shift are whimsical pop ditties, a sound coined by many before Chapman-Smith and bettered by a select few, namely Juana Molina and Psapp. The best of them, ‘Tacticle World’, ducks and dives into a Franco-Gypsy setting with all the soul of a Latino dancer; it well documents the musician’s Eastern European heritage while including a variety of other popular national styles. The worst is ‘Arbitrary Lines’, an accidental pastiche of Yann Tiersen with sickeningly “kooky” vocals, as though the Vancouver based singer-songwriter has overdosed on the pills Zooey Deschanel survives on.

Despite a few hiccups in the first section, Contraries excels thereafter, particularly on the lusciously subtle ‘In the Quiet’. While the song doesn’t disregard Chapman-Smith’s signature sound, it lends from the jazz jar with perfect precision. On ‘For Good’ she dons a whisky drenched vocal and crones over melting strings; final track ‘Carnival Song’ is a rousing squall from the depths of the soul. It’s the sound of an incredibly talented young mind casting off the cloak that previously disguised it. Phenomenal.

While this album struggles to fill its quota in lyric, in style it scores full marks – some tracks are so different from one another they could have been penned by another women. Of course with something so varied there will always be disagreeable moments, but overall few of these songs are simply passable, and some are cherishable. There’s a stellar record waiting to break forth from Joanna Chapman-Smith, and if she cuts the concept, she may well succeed.