Heather Woods Broderick: Invitation
Western Vinyl

Invitation, the full-length follow-up to Heather Woods Broderick's superb 2015 collection Glider, was conceived on the Oregon coast, where the singer-songwriter enjoyed bucolic summer days in earlier times and to which she returned for the new album's creation. Yet however idyllic the scenario appears when described as such, the recording's production came to fruition during an evidently tumultuous period. A cryptic note accompanying the release, for example, references the tenuousness of relationships and that instability, both financial and mental, that comes from being a touring musician; pressures of said kind prompted Broderick to leave Brooklyn for Pacific City to take stock and examine personal gains and losses that'd accrued in her life to date.

Soul-searching of such a kind is naturally reflected in the songs' lyrics, which grapple with struggles and self-doubt, and run the emotional gamut from fear and trepidation to a tentative, hard-fought optimism; it's well-nigh impossible not to read the words in autobiographical terms, especially when they include references to “her brother's house” and “the coast of Oregon.” Mental and emotional fragilities are openly acknowledged, Broderick musing in one song, “I take it my words are getting lost rolling over my tongue” and in another “How many times in your life have you cried out / Having dreams at night of your teeth falling out.” Invitation is, therefore, a document of a person slowing down to try to make sense of things, illuminate the life she's lived with some degree of clarity, divest herself of bad habits, and reinstate balance. It's telling that the album's journey begins with self-examination (in “A Stilling Wind,” she wonders, “Have I changed yet / Or do my habits still remain”) and ends with self-acceptance, its last words “I accept,” expressed with the utmost vulnerability.

The album opens on a magnificent high with the stirring evocation “A Stilling Wind,” its five ever-intensifying minutes animated by a syncopated rhythm and haunting vocal. A sense of place is established immediately, the words painting a landscape with the lines “Further north than where I spent the year /At the edge of the cape, feet swingin' in the atmosphere / A stilling wind, thick with fear / Picked up all the tiny pieces to redeposit them here.” Pedal steel, strings, and percussion combine in an arrangement that builds incrementally, lifting Broderick's voice until the material reaches a glorious pitch.

In truth, nothing thereafter is at quite the same level, though a few songs come close. A melodic flourish distinguishes “Nightcrawler” with a strong hook, as does a gentle lilt and a country-tinged arrangement featuring pedal steel, vocal harmonies, and a piano that turns strangely waterlogged at song's end. After a restrained intro, “Where I Lay” detonates, its harder attack reminiscent of Glider's “Wyoming” and Broderick's vocal bolstered by a female choir chanting the song's title. “These Green Valleys” similarly begins by echoing the slow-burn of Glider's “All For a Love” before quickly charting its own anthemic course. The melancholy ache of “Slow Dazzle” is Broderick at her most potent, and it also shows how affecting her music can be when stripped to a piano-and-vocals presentation, even if strings and vocals also surface. The introspective mood carries over into the brief instrumental, “A Daydream,” before “White Tail,” the album's second most memorable song, weds a somewhat “Tusk”-like drum pulse to vocal melodies that swoon like Cocteau Twins at its most transporting. The album's ballads-heavy focus reinstates itself with “Quicksand,” an intimate portrait of a relationship's collapse and what remains (“Memories, like bones, are bleached away”).

Sonically, Invitation isn't Glider part two, though there is naturally carry-over, Broderick's voice the obvious connecting thread. Certainly one change involves production-related tasks, with the earlier set involving Heather's brother Peter in mixing and overdubbing capacities and the new one crediting D. James Goodwin as the co-producer (he also plays pedal steel, guitar, synths, and percussion on the album). More critically, the substantial contributions Peter made to Glider as an instrumentalist are missed on Invitation; vocals and synthesizer by him appear on the new set on two songs only, though his non-strings contributions are compensated for by the presence of Mirabai Pert (violin, viola), Anna Frtitz (cello), Danny Bensi (strings on “A Stilling Wind”), and Ryan Francesconi, who's credited with string arrangements on the songs featuring Pert and Fritz, “Slow Dazzle,” “Quicksand,” and “My Sunny One.” Andrew Carlson contributes bass and guitar (baritone and acoustic), among other things, while Heather herself is credited with keyboards, guitars, flute, and so forth. A small choir comprising Maia Friedman, Jessica Larrabee, Laura Stevenson, and Alicia Walter appears on three songs, too.

June 2019