She’s a Rose –  Sailing Stones (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Names can be an important choice for any artist and, if you are one of those people who likes to read meaning into an artist’s chosen moniker, well, you can read a lot of meaning into an artist’s chosen moniker. Sailing Stones is a particularly well chosen title, named after the rocks which seem to move at a snail’s pace across California’s Death Valley of their own volition. Well chosen because like those rocks, singer and multi-instrumentalist Jenny Lindfors makes music which also gently wanders, shimmers like the desert heat, is gauze-like and mysterious, ethereal and majestic, in an understated, unhurried sort of way.

Opening track She’s a Rose is wonderfully mercurial song, examining the transformation that happens as we grow and change to overcome life’s obstacles and indeed undergoing its own musical evolution as it plays out. From a core indie heart it adds piano lines, jazz vibes, hazy angelic choirs and sultry saxophones before exploding in a tangle of high drama and controlled cacophony.

Into Space is a gorgeous weave of textured music, dream-like and even when fuzzed out guitars build to drive the song to its final crescendos, they are simple and sleek, brooding and distant rather than dominating and obvious, wandering some Floydian landscapes and doing so with a wonderful sure footedness. Debut single, The Blazing Sun is an exercise in sheer gorgeousness, a slice of heavenly alt-folk and the perfect vehicle to show case Lindfors voice with the beautiful swan song of Sit Silent adding some gentle Americana vibes to close the e.p.

It’s a rich tapestry of sound and sentiment, it travels from the depths of the heart to the outer reaches of space and whilst it explores some big concepts along the way,  it remains intimate and personal, accessible, approachable. A triumph of complex music and big ideas sounding anything but.