Genevieve Walker: Home Songs
Higher Level Media

The title of Home Songs, the follow-up to Genevieve Walker's debut album Walking Home, was chosen to reflect the project's grounding in the fabric of family life and early years of motherhood. By Walker's own account, many of the songs' melodies originated as lullabies she sang to her children, while others materialized with an instrument in one hand and a child on her knee. Whereas Walking Home was influenced by her experiences touring the world as a violinist (with Krishna Das and others) and looking to home from elsewhere, Home Songs embraces the replenishing rewards of everyday life and being with family.

Produced by Chris Gartner at Redwood Sound, the eight-song release accompanies Walker on violin, viola, piano, and vocals with cellist Noah Hoffeld, French hornist Chris Seligman, Bansuri flutist Steve Gorn, vocalist Rafe Pearlman, kartals player Nina Rao, and Gartner, who's credited with bass, whistling, arranging, beats, and ambient soundscapes. The album is Walker's, yes, but he clearly played a critical collaborative part in its creation. Walker's strong violin playing, especially when coupled with the other acoustic instruments, imbues the material with a resonant chamber neo-classical character.

Setting the tone, the opening “Constellations” proves enveloping for its warmth, open-hearted expressiveness, and luscious sound design. Wordless vocals, strings, and ethereal textures give the material the feel of a transporting ambient soundscape; the yearning melodies and hushed vocals amplify its connection to the human heart, however. While their emphasis on layered string textures amplifies the elegiac characters of “Saints” and “Fathers,” a pretty piano part animates “Mothers” and opens a path for the strings' stately voicings and a stirring contribution by Seligman. Pearlman's vocalizing induces chills on the strings-laden meditation “Moons,” and genre considerations fall to the wayside when an ode as enriched by love as “Sons” appears. Material and performances so distinguished and authentic do much to elevate Home Songs.

August 2022