Once the Sun Goes Down
Artist: Lynne Hansen
Label: Lynne Hansen Records
Time: 11 Tracks / 43 minutes

Some digital offerings now let the listener re-mix songs in their own homes. That would be a great feature for this soundtrack to heartbreak, where one player ruins several pieces.

If you took off the drum track, some of these songs could be quite engaging, but the first three are wrecked by Blake Manning’s up-front soulless drumming. Like when someone stands in front of the TV when you are trying to watch something, you just want to shout at him, “Stop spoiling this and get out of the way!”

In another case of something small spoiling the whole, the corny rhyme “hand” and “promised land” usually grates if I hear it once, but we get it twice within five tracks here.

Hansen’s music is rootsy, or as she puts it, “porch music with a little Texas red dirt.” Banjos gently rain down over the whole disc like warm, refreshing drizzle on a humid summer day and her somewhat dour vocal style is pure country. On “No More Rain” it is unreconstructed bluegrass.

At times, Ottawa’s Hansen paints some strong images (“I fell with gypsies / We dance with bells around our feet as we weave and sway… I held on with both hands till my hands did ache”) and she can put a nice chorus together: bits of the superb “Riptide” are not far away from something that Buddy and Julie Miller might come up with. This is technically proficient, but I often find it difficult to empathise with Hansen’s characters.

The whole collection is bathed in sadness, with constant mentions of pain, melancholy, loneliness and the like. Even the closing ballad “Lilacs Dancing,” which sounds like she has now found love, suggests that she is looking back into the past. Her deep, visceral understanding of her subjects make this sound powerfully autobiographical and much would resonate with someone going through a breakup.

Fine in paces, but annoying in others, you might have to be a country addict to enjoy this.

Download: Riptide, Mary Mary.

Derek Walker