Pick of the bunch from Canadian troubadour in late career full bloom.
Lynn Miles may not yet be among your ‘top ten Canadian songwriters’, but A Bouquet of Black Flowers may be about to change that. With three Canadian Folk Music English Songwriter of the Year Awards and a JUNO Award for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year: Solo under her belt, Miles’ music, whilst not unsung, is deserving of wider recognition. In 2008, she began re-recording selected songs from her back catalogue with voice and guitar, or piano accompaniment. The resulting four volumes of Black Flowers albums were released over the next six years. Fifteen of the forty songs from that series were picked and remastered for A Bouquet of Black Flowers. This summation of a recording career approaching its 40th anniversary is a fitting introduction for anyone yet to experience her music.
Distilled to their essence and delivered with intimacy, the sad songs making up Miles’ bouquet are largely concerned with matters of the heart. Whether sweet, tender, fearless, or (mainly) broken, there’s enough mention of that vital organ to fill a cardiology conference programme. Map Of My Heart reveals a “melancholy blue” four-chambered structure, with a room each for forgiveness, forgetting, mercy, and regret. These songs will resonate with listeners who have been recipients and/or donors of a broken heart, and maybe even the unfortunate few to be diagnosed with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (aka broken heart syndrome). Not all is heartache, though. There are themes of resilience, survival, and even optimism in After All, I’m Still Here, and Look Up.
There are a couple of changes of footwear worthy of note. In Surrender Dorothy, ruby slippers tread a yellow road that leads to rusty tin, burnt straw, heartbreak, and a dog with fleas. Miles gets her skates on for Hockey Night In Canada, the album’s senior citizen. First recorded for 1991’s Chalk This One Up to the Moon, the song was inspired by both early mornings stood rink-side watching her brother chase the biscuit in sub-zero conditions, and childhood evenings dominated by televised coverage of the official national winter sport. In the hierarchy of hockey songs, this one is, to use the parlance, ‘Top Cheddar’. It is also one of the few to mention the Zamboni, an ice resurfacing machine. Hockey Night In Canada could be a not-so-distant relative of Joni Mitchell’s River, a skate containing a line from which is quoted in Last Night, a song from Miles’ Slightly Haunted album.
Centre stage and in full bloom throughout, Miles’ voice is reminiscent at times of Janis Ian or Eliza Gilkyson. Delicate instrumentation creates a trellis around which her melodic tendrils curl. There is beauty and warmth in abundance here, if not always joy, but then most of us have at some time temporarily resided at a certain hotel down at the end of lonely street. The comforting effect of songs of a plaintive persuasion is a well-known phenomenon, and Miles’s introspective collection will connect with listeners at the high end of lonesome. There is solace to be found in this bunch handpicked by a torchbearer for those with a Sweet and Tender Heart.
