Heather Lynne Horton – Get Me To A Nunnery
Heather Lynne Horton – Get Me To A Nunnery
Format: CD – Digital
Label: Pauper Sky Records
Release: 2023
Release date: November 3, 2023
There are moments in music when your sensibilities are arrested by the sweeping beauty of instruments, voices and songs. You find yourself caught up in a certain sonic rapture that leads to deep catharsis. It’s as if you’ve been bathed by healing waters and emerged enlightened.
That is the experience of Heather Lynne Horton’s third studio album, ‘Get Me to a Nunnery.’ In 10 self-penned songs, Horton has created a melodic utopia that conjures up scenes of Kate Bush sipping tea with Joni Mitchell in a lush, muted garden with its beguiling scents and breathtaking imagery. Then, as if almost unexpectedly, Sinead O’Connor joins the soiree as the warm sun begins to set.
Horton’s hypnotic voice, here recorded and produced to maximize its alluring appeal, rides the velvety elements of the tracks. There is a forlorn tinge to her singing and to the songs, but this is by no means a wallowing record. In fact, Horton’s message is of strength and empowerment.
The album, recorded in Chicago from mid-2022 to early 2023, features Horton on guitar and haunting violin; her husband Michael McDermott on guitar, keyboards, piano, and bass; Will Kimbrough on baritone guitar; John Deaderick on piano, keyboards, and organ; Matt Thompson on electric bass and upright bass and Steven Gillis, who also mixed four of the album’s songs, on drums.
Produced by Horton with co-production and engineering by McDermott, Get Me to a Nunnery is chockfull of ethereal gems. There’s the gorgeous, folk-influenced opening track, ‘After All This Time’, also the album’s first video, with its wall of voices and gauzy instrumentation. There’s the pulsating, potent ‘I Don’t Like Your Children’, a biting manifesto on kids’ untarnished knack for seeing the truth in people. There’s ‘Beatrix’, a lilting ballad that plays like a dream complete with cloudy scenes and washed-out colours. And there’s ‘Ten Times’, a lightly galloping number tackling the difficulties women face to be heard in today’s male-driven society.
Website: https://www.heatherhortonmusic.com/home
Tracks:
01. After All This Time (3:15)
02. I Don’t Like Your Children (3:41)
03. Ten Times (3:29)
04. Call a Spade a Spade (5:48)
05. Beatrix (4:55)
06. Sunset Marigold (2:57)
07. Six Foot (5:17)
08. You Said So (3.50)
09. Take Off (4:18)
10. Lin’s Never-Ending Song (7:51)