Released: 26th October 2018
Rating: ★★★
Part of the Oregon folk scene for over 15 years, Laura Gibson’s sixth album ‘Goners’ is delivered with stately confidence. Plaintive clarinets, sombre cello and gentle keys adorn Gibson’s nimbly picked guitar. Inspired by 60s prog folk lyrical tics, women are wolves, men machines and everything else is a sharp object over forty minutes of solemn ruminations on the death of her father and Gibson grappling with whether to bring life into the world.
Aided by members of Death Cab, the Decemberists and string arrangements by Kelly Pratt (St. Vincent and Father John Misty), the lynchpins of this record are still Gibson’s characteristically reedy vocals and metaphor-heavy lyrics. A party record it ain’t, but for a bleak autumn hangover or a cold evening spent staring into the embers of a dying fire, ‘Goners’ has got you covered.
Dillon Eastoe
