Jenny Ritter
Album: Raised By Wolves
Label: Fiddle Head
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.jennyrittermusic.ca

Jenny's a talented Canadian singer-songwriter who's also active with other musicians (bands Nicely Nicely and Marmota) and choirs, but for me the appeal of her own writing eclipses those avenues. Her musical style is bluegrass-inflected Americana, but her subject matter is inevitably drawn from her own native land, and Raised By Wolves is billed as Jenny's homage to her unconventional upbringing in the backwoods of Vancouver Island. The evocative landscapes of its songs explore humankind's dualistic nature, whereby the "hidden inner animal" counters the "cultivated public face", and they do so in music that's genuinely celebratory and uplifting in nature and execution.

Jenny's pure-toned vocal delivery and expertly rootsy banjo playing proves most infectious, and she has the gift for writing memorable songs, the pick of which (Turn Your Thoughts, Wolf Wife and Museum Song) stand willing and ready comparison with the best of similarly crossover music from the likes of Laura Veirs - whose mix of confessional philosophy with darker cosmic realisations is sometimes recalled in Jenny's own music.

I rather enjoyed Jenny's debut offering Bright Mainland back in 2013, so the prospect of its followup Raised By Wolves was certainly an inviting one. And if anything it's an even finer record, with a more pronounced contemporary bluegrass feel (maybe this is due largely to the dominance of Jenny's banjo and either Elise Boeur's or Adam Iredale-Gray's fiddle in the mix and instrumental backing). The deception comes whereby several of the tracks start out very folky and stripped-down, but around midway through the drums kick in and the arrangements crank up a gear or so (cleverly mirroring the shift in the lyrics, or else highlighting that trademark duality between the outdoors world and the interior landscapes of the mind perhaps). Even so, there's often a sense of not-quite-being-resolved about some of the songs, where even Jenny's generally positive world-view embodies just a touch of unsureness here and there, as in the mixed feelings of uncertain desires conjured by the album's final pair of songs, Lost And Found and Remember The Life. And sheer strength of character invariably wins out for Jenny, naturally.

David Kidman