Old Man Luedecke
Album: Domestic Eccentric
Label: True North
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.OldManLuedecke.ca

Holed up in his cabin in the snow-heavy Nova Scotia woods with his wife and baby twins, Canadian singer-songwriter Chris Luedecke invited frequent collaborator Tim O'Brien to bring his mandolin (and anything else he could pile into the car) along for the week and, having hauled in the recording gear, the pair set about laying down this, their third album together, recording everything save for Samson Grisman's bass parts, live off the floor.

Doubtless fuelled by recent fatherhood, it's a collection of songs about different aspects of family, the relationships it involves, the need to throw off childish things and the highs and lows that come with being a parent.

The album opens in playful form with its Prologue, Yodelady, the first use of the phonemic pun since Esther and Abi Ofarim recorded Cinderella Rockefella. Although with a little more yodel, and a lot more banjo. And a line about being the yolk of love. Then, throwing in a reference to Vermeer, you get mid-tempo , fiddle-backed The Girl In The Pearl Earring (though, to be picky, it's with not in) O'Brien harmonising on what is patently another love song to Luedecke's wife and her 'darkened lashes'. As is the folksy ballad The Briar and the Rose (which includes the amusing rhyme "I was thorny, I was young and horny"), on which near neighbour Jennah Barry provides harmony vocals.

The mood of the opening tracks, musically and lyrically, sustains throughout, offering up the mountain music banjo jauntiness of Brightest On The Heart, the Guthrie-like folk-blues Wait A While (where he asks his lover if she'd be his plus one on the ark), Old High Way Of Love with its echoes of the Louvins, and bluegrass shanty Chester Boat Song.

There's no huge surprises musically, the numbers all hewing to a fairly tried and trusted folk-roots-bluegrass sound, but they're all a delight, as indeed are the, as the title suggests, domestic-themed lyrics. Luedecke's guileless joy is particularly apparent on the simple fingerpicked Now We Got A Kitchen (where those Loudon Wainwright comparisons ring clearest) about the way your lives together change as you grow up and taking on the responsibilities of a home and kids, and the sprightly, falsetto-soaring Hate What I Say about not fixing the sink, letting the fox get in to the chicken run and buying a new guitar. It's probably also the only song ever to namecheck Juice Newton.

I was particularly taken with Those Early Days, another baby-centric number that starts with just Leudecke's guitar and gradually introduces O'Brien's harmonies and mandolin and brushed drums from Nick Halley, calling to mind Guy Clarke as, recalling seeing toddlers running wild at a supermarket, he sings about holding on to the memories of your little monkeys' childhoods and how, while they may have to save up "for a date night so we can have our fight", the kids "make our messy house feel like holy ground." It could have been sappy and schmaltzy, but, like everything about his music, Luedecke just makes it feel honest.

Mike Davies