Lisa Hake is a singer-songwriter-guitarist whose home is Dundalk, County Louth. She originally hails from the wine country hills of Northern California and before that, the coal mining mountains of West Virginia. Lisa has just released her second album 'Wind Under Wood'.
'Wind Under Wood' flirts with many genres. On many tracks it reminds me of the work of Janis Ian while on others I can hear the Folk-Jazz of mid-90s Joni Mitchell. When I asked my wife she suggesed the album was more similar to Nanci Griffith style Country music. One thing for certain is that 'Wind Under Wood' is an accomplished piece of work from a really good singer and musician.
As the title suggest the album is steeped in nature references with a particularly leaning towards songs about the sea and water. "We will sleep in fishing nets beneath the moon, Dance upon the wooden decks of your ballroom" [Fisherman's Tears] The descriptive lyrics of the songs are beautifully written and is one of the strenghts of the album.
Another quality aspect of 'Wind Under Wood' is the cd booklet and images used. In the lyrics section there's a short note explaining the inspiration of each track. In fact the booklet can be viewed here: http://www.lisahake.com/WindUnderWoodBooklet.pdf
I think there's alot to like in this record but it suffers from lack of variety which is an odd statement considering the difficulty I've had to connect the album to a genre. There's warmth in abundance here for sure but a lack of variety means my attention wanders and I lose sight of the beautiful lyrics and storys within the songs.
Lisa Hake - Wind Under Wood [8 out of 12]
http://www.lisahake.com/
http://www.myspace.com/lisahakemusic
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