Coloradoan singer-songwriter Josephine Foster is most often categorized as a folk artist, but while rich in tradition her work exudes consistent individualism that’s far from conventional. For a stretch she was averaging a record a year, but No More Lamps in the Morning is Foster’s first since 2013, and it finds her not with a cache of fresh stuff but reinterpreting material from her ample discography. Foster is in fine voice and her nylon string guitar terrific, as is the Portuguese guitar of her husband Victor Herrero and on two tracks the cello of Gyða Valtýsdóttir; it’s out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Fire Records.
Many fringe-leaning neo-folkies strike the consciousness like Johnny and Janet come latelies knocked sideways by Harry Smith’s Anthology, John Jacob Niles, and/or The Basement Tapes, but Josephine Foster’s profile registers as sincerely bohemian. Performing as a funeral and wedding singer in her youth, she desired to become an opera singer but ended up traveling a different path, reportedly working as a vocal teacher in Chicago and eventually amassing output both solo and in collaboration.
Foster cut albums backed by the Cherry Blossoms and the Supposed while playing in The Children’s Hour and as half of the duo Born Heller with avant-jazz bassist Jason Ajemian. And although her recordings span over 15 years, she’s frequently been lumped into the New Weird America bag. But in fact Foster’s reliably sounded quite Old, and not in a precious way; that her 2001 EP of children’s songs “Little Life,” reissued by Fire on CD and 10-inch vinyl in ’13 (and still available) manages to lack affectation as it brandishes a boatload of ukulele is a feat worth considering.
In 2004 the psych-rock flavored All the Leaves Are Gone (with the Supposed) emerged on Locust and was followed by a pair of solo discs for the label, ’05’s Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You, and ’06’s A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, wherein she freely adapted the German Lieder of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf and combined them with texts based on the writings of Goethe, Mörike, and Eichendorff.
This Coming Gladness (featuring her husband, Spanish musician Victor Herrero on electric guitar) was released in ’08 on Bo’Weavil Recordings, and she put out Graphic as a Star, a collection of settings for 27 Emily Dickinson poems, on Fire the next year; she’s remained with the label ever since, with her subsequent work including two albums co-credited to the Victor Herrero Band.
2010’s Anda Jaleo is composed of gloriously straightforward flamenco-edged renditions of songs collected by Federico Garcia Lorca in Coleccion De Las Canciones Populares Espanolas as ’11’s Perlas gathered interpretations of Spanish compositions chosen by Foster. Both were cut in Spain, but her ’12 effort Blood Rushing found her home in Colorado as the following year’s I’m a Dreamer was the byproduct of the inevitable trip to Nashville.
All this and finding time for contributions to Earth Recordings’ Shirley Collins’ tribute Shirley Inspired and Tompkins Square’s Karen Dalton covers set Remembering Mountains; for those unfamiliar with Foster it’s Dalton who serves up a strong point of comparison. In particular her voice; possessing a fragile and unique timbre, Foster’s singing won’t dally in separating the fans from the agnostic. Simultaneously antique and progressive, she’s akin to Dalton in conjuring images of a folky Billie Holliday but with a quaver that’s mostly subtle and occasionally assertive.
And the sound of her voice is easily the most immediately striking aspect of No More Lamps in the Morning’s opener “Blue Roses.” Revisiting a Rudyard Kipling poem she first set to music on I’m a Dreamer, the gentle glistening of this version contrasts rather strongly from the mid-’20th century MOR piano and almost Hawaiian pedal steel of her prior treatment.
Each version begins with Foster’s distinct recitation; upon adjusting to a singing cadence she’s accompanied here only by her own strumming and the unearthly radiance of Herrero’s Portuguese guitar, which unwinds in a harp-like manner, though I’m also having difficulty shaking an association with the mystery instruments played by the late ’20s gospel vocalist Washington Phillips.
The sparseness of the piece surely enhances an out-of-time quality, but as stated above, there’s nothing contrived on display. To the contrary, “A Thimbleful of Milk,” one of three reprised from This Coming Gladness, touches down in a decidedly’60s-derived folk setting as it extends the calmness of this appealing tidy program.
No More Lamps in the Morning’s one new selection provides a setting for James Joyce’s poem “My Dove, My Beautiful One” from his collection Chamber Music; the result blends the torchy and meditative (interestingly, Fire’s 2008 2LP Chamber Music: James Joyce (1907). 1-36. corralled 36 artists in service of the same goal; there, “My Dove, My Beautiful One” gets tackled by Willy Mason).
Gyða Valtýsdóttir’s cello doesn’t significantly alter the proceedings, but its presence is certainly welcome; along with a few brief passages recalling a tin whistle, the instrument adds weight to the gradually unfolding expansiveness of “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” the piece capped by Foster’s upper register vocal resonance.
The title-track originally appeared on Born Heller’s sole self-titled LP back in ’04, and like the choices from the psych-tinged This Coming Gladness, it differs substantially, though this relaxing and sizeable lengthening of “No More Lamps in the Morning” is also the nearest this release comes to psychedelic environs.
The opening minute of “Second Sight” offers a prelude of drifting abstraction retaining the sense of placidity as the majority navigates a traditional sensibility that gets nicely spiked by the raised intensity of intertwined voice and cello. “Magenta,” like “Blue Roses” culled from I’m a Dreamer, ends the album with a vocal highlight as nylon string of a vaguely coffeehouse aura mingles with Herrero’s temperate eccentricity.
Josephine Foster’s latest ultimately connects as a minor work, but that shouldn’t be taken as a slight; Chamber Music is assessed as minor Joyce, but over a century later it’s still part of the conversation. No More Lamps in the Morning feels durable enough to attain similar longevity.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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