The reviews

Harpo’s Ghost
Thea Gilmore
Sanctuary    ***

After releasing six albums in four years, Harpo’s Ghost comes after a two-and-a-half year break. All that, and Thea Gilmore is still only in her mid-twenties.
With beefier production, her ambitious songs here take on staggering dimensions. there’s everything from the hypnotic pummelling of Everybody’s Numb to the magic forest of Whistle and Steam and the brassy pop of Cheap Tricks.
After the auspicious round of early albums that commenced in her teens, she’s grown even further with both her lyrics and melodies.
Gilmore has never shied away from social issues and topical matters, but continues to excel in making the sentiments more universal by giving them poetic dimensions which enhance their resonance. She’s equally at home with the small details which give life to character-driven narratives, as well as turning her attentions towards romantic quandaries and longing.

Game Theory
The Roots
Def Jam   ***

Despite their signing to Def Jam, on Game Theory the Roots head in a direction opposite from all the trendy, commercial formulas that the label has pioneered.
This is as intensely a “Roots album” as anything they’ve put out, the rightful sequel to their brilliant, creative Phrenology. Game Theory is a dark and brooding affair, not just in Black Thought’s foreboding lyricism but also in its musical textures.
There’s a layer of melancholia running beneath nearly every song, whether in the heavy thump of In the Music or the frenetic verve of Here I Come.
Track-for-track, this isn’t The Roots’ most scintillating collection of songs, but listened to from end-to-end, it’s actually a remarkable achievement in album-making. Every song builds into the next one, and those willing to experience Game Theory as a 47-minute suite of 13 songs will be richly rewarded.

Dreaming Through the Noise
Vienna Teng
Zoe Records   ****

Experimental singer-songwriter Vienna Teng arrives at her ambitious third album at the peak of her considerable powers, with renowned producer/bassist Larry Klein providing a more textured and atmospheric landscape.
Contributions from musicians Jay Bellerose, Carla Kihlstedt, and Marc Orton make Teng’s piano-based, jazzy chamber-folk shiver with new intimacy. But at the core, she remains as seductive and transcendent as ever, even as lyrically she takes more of a storytelling approach.
Marrying complex melodies and moody tones to captivating lyrics about fevered longings, unspoken truths, and uncharted suffering, the former software engineer pulls listeners into a secret, subterranean world that is often as murky and disturbing as it is wondrous.
Count Dreaming Through the Noise among the “can’t miss” records of 2006.

Migrations
The Duhks
Sugarhill  **

With each release, this Canadian quintet’s adventurous, energetic eclecticism sounds more like a signature fusion (and less like bluegrass, despite Tania Elizabeth’s fiddle and Leonard Podolak’s banjo).
The material on Migrations ranges all over the map with a pair of spirituals steeped in the tradition of Georgia’s Sea Islands (Moses, Don’t Get Lost and Turtle Dove), a zydeco romp through Cajun country (Down to the River), a ballad in tribute to an Irish patriot (Who Will Take My Place?), a syncopated revival of Tracy Chapman’s Mountains o’ Things and the ragtime blues of Ol’ Cook Pot.
While a pair of instrumental medleys highlight the musicians’ acoustic virtuosity, the soulful vocals of Jessee Havey and their ability to fashion songs from a variety of sources into such a cohesive whole distinguish the Duhks from folk acts, jam bands, or any other musical category.