Devon Sproule I Love You, Go Easy

On her new album, I Love You, Go Easy, Devon Sproule often sounds as if she is reciting free verse over, along with, or occasionally against the accompanying music. On some tracks, like The Evening Ghost Crab and The Unmarked Animals, this creates a fresh effect, but it jars and distracts elsewhere on the album. The occasional fracture between vocal and accompanying rhythm can take away from what are mostly thought-provoking songs.

On The Unmarked Animals, one of the album's quicker tracks, the vocal rhythms feel syncopated and the song benefits. Sproule sings, With a bag of tobacco between us, but simply reading the line does not convey the musicality present in the phrase's meter. Moments like this shine on the album.

Lines from the title track, I Love You, Go Easy, offer a glimpse at Sproule's clever lyrics: I say from my gold flower bed / I love you, go easy / You say from your candle's two ends / I love you, go easy. This is a sample of the lyrical inventiveness Sproule often employs; the candle's two ends line plays nicely off the established image of a candle burning at both ends and its accompanying meaning without a direct reference. Images like this pack a lot of meaning into only a few well-chosen words. And even the song's title, repeated during the chorus, is a moving combination of confession and plea on its own.

Sproule's understated delivery belies the album's lyrical depth. With few exceptions, Sproule maintains a level of impartial tone and tempo, though the lyrics themselves seem to be drawn from private inspiration. When not being profound or personal, Sproule's lyrics do forge some vivid visual images, which keeps the mind's eye of the listener busy. I'm a bird with a big mouth / a big mouth and a microphone, Sproule sings on The Warning Bell, a reflection on her life as a musician.

I Love You, Go Easy is an uneven album, not just going from song to song, but within the songs themselves. It offers a variety of moments, some brilliant and entrancing, but not without a few distracting decisions.