In this album of shadows and light New Englander Susan Cattaneo invites the listener to "imagine all my skeletons wandering around in the daylight".
Two events prompted her to explore darker and more personal themes than on her previous three albums.
One was the betrayal of a close friend which she turned into a murder ballad Lorelei sung from the perspective of a dead woman drowned by her twin sister.
Secondly, she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after saving the life of a woman who was critically injured at her home. Song writing combined with therapy to help her recovery.
However, it is not in her nature to write gloomy tunes and it goes against the grain to depart from her default option of upbeat tempos and major keys. Like her heroine, Linda Ronstadt, she prefers the sugar coating of true love to the bitter pill of heartache.
This means that, although she may strive for an earthier, more organic sound, the slick, relatively conventional, New Country arrangements tend to neutralise the rawer emotions she expresses.
In the upbeat Queen Of The Dancehall, the belle of a honky-tonk ball dances under coloured lights to escape the sad reality of her life and Cattaneo's songs adopt a similar philosophy by which bright surfaces gloss over the shades of grey.
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The highlights of the album are a sequence of four slower songs: Haunted Heart,Done Better,Ingenue and John Brown. The more reflective mood of these heartfelt songs lend greater subtlety and substance to lines like "wish I could wish my way out of the dark" from the title track.
Cattaneo sings of broken homes and busted hearts but in the closing song - How A Cowboy Says Goodbye - we are reassured that "dark gives way to light" and so know that all's well that ends well in the best of all possible worlds.
Susan Cattaneo's website
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