CD: Love Is The Way
Artist: Eddi Reader
Label: Rough Trade


Reviewed by Peter North,
Host of Dead Ends and Detours

Listen to samples from Love is the Way:
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New York City
Never Going Back Again
Fallen Twice

One of Scotland’s greatest artistic exports, Eddi Reader continues to burst at the seams with beautiful and, in this case, inspiring new works.

On this batch of 13 pieces, Reader frames songs like "Sweet Mountain of Love" and "New York City" in arrangements that are not only exquisitely constructed and executed, they also perfectly accentuate the core emotions and images she serves up.

At one turn, as in "Over It Now", she leads her audience by the hand through the realization that particular affairs of the heart was finite, and if we’re not putting masks on ourselves we are certainly capable of handing them out.

In many ways Love Is The Way seems to be about acceptance, finding a comfort zone, and having some say in settling in that space. Wonderful melody lines skip like stones across a calm body of water, or sound as if they were floating above the same on a perfectly still and sun filled day. Friends like guitarist Boo Hewerdine, and Edmonton’s Teddy Borowiecki, who handled most of the keys, accordion, and string arrangements, deliver consistently sympathetic and tasteful playing throughout this disc, where not a single line of lyric or note is wasted..

As she closes in on her fiftieth birthday, Eddi Reader has delivered what is her best work to date, to what is already a superior discography, and one that makes the listener want to know what future projects will bring.