The front cover of
Heidi Berry's third album is generically 4AD, with its florid typography and super-saturated close-up photo, artistically blurred, of a closed venus flytrap. So it would have been easy to assume it was just another slab of post-
Cocteau Twins dream pop, all reverb, synth washes, and swirly vocals singing impenetrable lyrics. If that's what the listener is looking for,
Heidi Berry won't entirely disappoint, but it isn't just a way to pass the time until the next
This Mortal Coil album.
Heidi Berry is rooted in a musical style that could not have been more unfashionable in 1993, a type of highly orchestrated folk-rock pitched somewhere between
Nick Drake and
Sandy Denny's solo records on the one hand and southern California singer/songwriter soft rock on the other.
Berry even covers "Heart Like a Wheel," the
Kate McGarrigle tune that gave
Linda Ronstadt's breakthrough album its name.
Hugh Jones' traditional 4AD production techniques are conspicuously absent:
Heidi Berry has a notably live and largely acoustic sound, free of the label's usual phalanx of effects pedals and keyboards, although the carefully layered arrangements, featuring strings, acoustic guitars, piano, occasional steel guitar accents, and various forms of hand percussion, remain as lush and textured as ever. Atypically for a
Jones production,
Berry's vocals are forthrightly front and center, mixed well above the low-key instrumentation; her startling vocal resemblance to
Sandy Denny has never been more pronounced than on tracks like the graceful opener "Mercury." A handful of semi-famous names from the era appear in the credits alongside
Berry and her longtime mentor
Pete Astor (formerly of early Creation signings
the Loft and
the Weather Prophets), including
Kitchens of Distinction guitarist
Julian Swales and members of
the House of Love and the Charlatans, but
Berry's heart is in the art-folk scene of the late '60s and early '70s, closer in spirit to
Judy Collins'
Wildflowers and
Nick Drake's
Bryter Layter than, say,
Lush or
My Bloody Valentine. As a result,
Heidi Berry has a timelessness many other albums from this time and place lack. ~ Stewart Mason