Erin McKeown: Distillation

It doesn’t take very many seconds of Erin McKeown’s Distillation to tick past before you realize that you’ve lucked into something special. The opening track, “Queen of Quiet” is a 1:47 appetizer of the feast to come. What follows is an album that flirts with bluegrass, plays with jazzy standards, monkeys with beat poetry, and challenges you to dance and think simultaenously (hey-oh!). McKeown is a time machine and she works both forward and backward. One moment you’re in the 1920s (“Didn’t They?”); the next you’re in a stripped-down, post-modern folk landscape (“How To Open My Heart In 4 Easy Steps”).

McKeown’s playfulness comes to the forefront in “La Petite Mort,” one of the giddiest songs about death you’ll be dancing to any time soon. In it, the singer takes on the role of a husband who has just lost his wife to an untimely death in the throes of a wedding night orgasm. “We both found heaven right then, you just chose not to come back.” In moments like these, you can almost hear the twinkle in McKeown’s eyes.

What makes the album special is its ability to blend the whimsical with the intimate. A snappy cover of Rodgers and Hart’s “You Mustn’t Kick It Around” segues into the beautifully pained “How To Open My Heart In 4 Easy Steps”. Some of the songs verge on fractured fairy tales (“Blackbirds” and “Dirt Gardener”). Others display a weary, jaded-beyond-her-years quality that gives her work an edginess that isn’t found in the contemporary artists who parallels could best be drawn to. Her lyrics read like poetry—-good poetry-—alternately quirky and bitter.

“I waved my hope around like a cheap flag / whose colors had faded / whose emblem was laughable,” McKeown sings in “Love In 2 Parts.” “What is whiskey in the morning but a clear path to the door?”

The upbeat songs will probably sink their teeth into you first. “Queen of Quiet” is an instant attention-grabber. In under than two minutes, it announces the arrival of an artist worth paying attention to. “La Petite Mort” is another upbeat gem. Her skilled guitar work will get you dancing out on your living room floor; or, at the very least, bobbing your head and drumming on your steering wheel.

The slower, darker material isn’t as instantly accessible—it may take a couple listens—but it’s well worth the effort. This is a voice worth hearing; an artist who finds play in the pain and pain in the play.

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