 |
Genre: dream pop, indie pop Rating:  Check Out: “Lakes of Canada,” “This Joy,” “Owl In The Dark,” and “Vinalhaven Harbor.”  myspace |
Hailing from Wisconsin and currently based in Nashville, Stephanie Dosen credits her beginning in music on spare time spent in her family’s peacock farm. While that explanation would have adequately explained her playful and haunting independent debut Ghosts, Mice, And Vagabonds, her Bella Union debut A Lily For The Spectre is less playful and more temperate.
Like other Bella Union artists, this album features delicate and straight-forward lyrics couched in Dosen’s hauntingly sweet voice. Comparing Ghosts and A Lily shows what benefits a producer and a contract can bring; the lyrics and arrangements are less cluttered and more down-to-earth here than in Ghosts. This simplicity allows Dosen’s voice to really shine through, and it does – to the point where you’re unlikely to ever forget her.
The only detractors from this album is the sometimes cloying quality of these songs. There’s only so much Dosen can do with her voice until you become convinced that your CD is skipping, the songs sound that similar. And despite all the hype Sufjan Stevens gets, I still think Dosen’s cover of The Innocence Mission’s “Lakes of Canada” is the best. Overall, it’s a beautiful debut, and I fully expect her popularity to increase once her music shows up in the soundtrack to a major motion picture.
