Boston based Patty Larkin is a guitarist of some dexterity and originality which added to a gravelly, though not over the top voice, is a rich foundation seam for her intriguing songs full of interesting angles and images. Patty Larkin attended the same music college as Bruce Cockburn and the similarities don’t end there. A guitar playing singer songwriter who has been producing albums of stellar quality for twenty five years without much commercial success echoes her fellow alumni quite well.
It makes sense that Cockburn is one of the twenty five artists she has collaborated with on twenty five songs to celebrate twenty five years as a recording artist. The strategy was to send these artists a song and allow them to bring their own, always minimalist, contribution to Patty’s recorded vocal. It actually serves as a who’s who of the best singer songwriters of the last quarter of a century – as well as Cockburn there is Shawn Colvin, Janis Ian, Dar Williams, Jonatha Brooke, Martin Sexton, David Wilcox and Greg Brown to name but a few.
The results are fascinating in a whole range of ways. That twenty five different artists could add their own unique personality and the whole thing sound so cohesive is quite a feat in itself. Of course though the point is the songs. In these settings the songs get a real chance to breathe and they come across as a warm sweet breath of love; the rational poignant emotion of The Cranes gets that lazy Wilcoxian languishing gentleness; Cockburn’s guitar on Open Arms is subtly exquisite and if you never took him as an Emmylou Harris style backing vocals boy you really need to hear this; Pablo Neruda could be a Suzanne Vega song and her voice fits like Larkin’s like a twin; Erin McKeown adds her quirk to Beautiful; and Chained To These Loving Arms gets some of that Mary Chapin-Carpenter emotional drive.
I could go on. For the many Soul Surmise readers who I imagine have never even heard of Patty Larkin this is an excellent introduction. For those of us who have been collecting her quality work for twenty years and more it’s a celebratory treat. Typical the artist that Larkin is that she didn’t just churn out a Best Of. Great move!
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