Folk supergroup trio expands upon their sound while keeping their specialness.
Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins make up the folk music supergroup I’m With Her. Their latest album, “Wild and Clear and Blue,” exemplifies the artists’ tight-knit relationship. Intimate vocal harmonies illuminate each of its eleven songs, which are all shared cowrites. While 2018’s “See You Around” featured a charming, stripped-down, handcrafted vibe, producer Josh Kaufman brings a sleek, polished studio sound to “Wild and Clear.” The instrumental arsenal this time around is impressive. It builds upon the expected guitars, mandolins, banjos, lap steel and fiddle to include piano, organ, synths, cello, fretless bass, vibraphone, and harmonium. None of this musical menagerie crowds or overwhelms the album’s heavenly, ethereal soundscape, though.
Indeed, the overall mood here is a mellow one, which makes subtle tensions such as Watkins’ minor key fiddle interlude during ‘Ancient Light’ all the more stirring. The fiddle and mandolin duel of ‘Find My Way to You‘ has the warm intimacy of a gathering of close friends; ‘Only Daughter’ is a wistful, dusk-at-lakeside memory of parents and childhood that is reminiscent of Rickie Lee Jones at her most haunting; and the hushed jazzy blues of ‘Sisters of the Night Watch‘ begins with a chorus of echoed vocals and ends with an emotional wail. Most surprising is ‘Strawberry Moonrise,’ which could be a vocal vignette from a Brian Wilson “Smile” session.
“Wild and Clear and Blue” captures I’m With Her carefully expanding upon their sound while still retaining what makes them special. There are no startling twists to knock anything off balance. Just a sense of a group of consummate performers gently challenging themselves by trying out a few different directions.
