Red = Luck
Few artists craft albums as meticulously as Patty Larkin, the Boston-based alterna-folk artist who bridges the genre to pop, jazz, Celtic, and classical outposts with her adventurous arrangements and melodic structures. Working again with coproducer Bette Warner, Larkin continues to match literate storytelling with textured, roomy soundscapes built on electric and acoustic guitars, lap-steel, mandolin, piano, percussion, and more. Every note is as deliberate as a brushstroke--delicate arpeggios laid aside insinuating and angry guitars--and meant to serve her sophisticated, yet intimate lyrics about the intricacies of relationships. On this, her 10th album, Larkin longs for the innocence lost in adulthood and, on a larger scheme, in the wake of 9/11. Song after song ("All That Innocence," "Children," "Home," "Different World," "Normal") finds her searching for a more innocent time; "Home" ("love can make you whole again") re-creates the harmonica and melodic turns of early-20th-century parlor music. Whether whispering the seductive "24/7/365" or meditating on the beauty of a bird migration on "The Cranes," Larkin is never short of arresting, and gorgeous.--Alanna Nash