Laura Gibson - Invitation to the journey

There's a small town in Oregon that takes its name from a Native American tribe: it's called Coquille, which means "shell". This is where the curious story of Laura Gibson begins.

Born and raised in that small town nestled in greenery, the daughter of a kindergarten teacher and a forest ranger, the future singer-songwriter studied mathematics in college and became a national high-jump champion.

After a serious ankle injury, she taught herself to play classical guitar and began writing songs. Needing treatment, she moved to Portland, where she volunteered, performing for terminally ill AIDS patients. Meanwhile, the city's thriving music scene led her to take part in modest shows and an increasing number of club gigs.

It's said that if a song still sounds good with nothing but a simple guitar, only then can you call it a good song. And that's precisely the strength of this American folksinger.

Arpeggios on nylon strings; a fresh-faced, no-frills look; an aversion to the spotlight; a rough-edged, slightly childlike voice, like a Joanna Newsom pitched an octave lower; the influence of the giants of American folk, such as the fair-haired Joni Mitchell: this is how the twenty-four-year-old Laura Gibson introduces herself on her debut EP, Amends. It's 2004, and the shy young woman is already being counted among the West Coast's rising talents, alongside Laura Veirs and Nick Jaina. It's no surprise, then, that this six-track record soon catches the attention of the label Hush Records.

Indeed, If You Come To Greet Me was released by that very independent label in 2006. The Oregon artist brought the songs on this album to life during a month-long retreat to the places of her childhood: "I left all my music in Portland," she recalls, "relying only on my family's record collection." Steeped in the sounds of the great delta-blues artists, from Skip James to Elizabeth Cotton, and in the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Gibson crafted a precious formula that would stay with her for a long time. The genuineness of her ballads is steeped in a spectral indie-folk, forever balanced between poetry and the gothic. It brings to mind the Decemberists, then (who, incidentally, also hail from Portland and also made their debut with Hush Records), and evokes the dreamlike sagas of Fleet Foxes.

"This Is Not The End", a soft, delicate crescendo of piano, viola, guitar and trumpet, is the first stop on this minimalist journey through the lands of memory. The second voice belongs to Adam Selzer of Norfolk & Western, who oversees the production of every track, and who also makes himself heard in the nocturnal waltz of "NightWatch".

Among the many meditative pieces, there's "Hands In Pocket", a catchy, radio-ready ray of sunshine with a nursery-rhyme rhythm, and the engaging "Small Town Parade", ramshackle and country-flavored, with constant tempo shifts born of jazz. The jewel in the crown, though, is "Broken Bottle", which opens with an enigmatic, ironic melodic turn and resolves into warm, silky interweavings woven by nostalgic strings.

In short, we're talking about acoustic music, essential and as delicate as a house of cards, meticulous down to the last detail: music that might just make you want to switch off the lights, the TV and the computer, perhaps to run away somewhere, to remember the smell of the earth, or the soothing sound of a spring.

Another project from 2006 is the EP Six White Horses, a reworking of six great folk-blues classics, made in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Jason Leonard. Recorded over a weekend in an old Victorian house in Selwood, Oregon, these tributes - including the traditional "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair" and Furry Lewis's "Dryland Blues" - have a playful charm. They also feature some rather unconventional instruments, such as buckets, doors and newspaper pages.

After two years of silence, the girl from the Pacific Northwest returned with The Bests Of Season, written in an apartment overlooking a lovely, old cemetery in Portland.

"I have lived for exactly twenty-nine years," she said in an interview at the end of the long work on the new album, "not as long as trees, but certainly longer than birds. Sometimes I feel like an old woman, and I find death to be a calm, familiar presence. Other times, I feel like a little girl, to whom death seems strange and shocking".

An enchanted world, then, makes room for a dark meditation on the end of life. It's a reflection the reserved American songwriter doesn't approach alone, however, but alongside producer Tucker Martine and an incredible roster of guests: Shelly Short of the Decemberists, the M. Ward's Band, Menomena, and Norfolk & Western.

The album is split into two parts, "Communion Songs" and "Funeral Songs", likely in an attempt to reflect on the life-death antithesis. The overall mood, smoky and dark, pushes beyond the boundaries of pure acoustic music. The record opens with the electronic waltz of the dreamy "Parade Of Shadows", built on guitar and viola, recalling the dark, dreamlike landscapes of Sigur Rós's (). With "Come By The Storm", enriched by accordion, the Hawaiian-tinged "Sweet Deception" and the sweet "Funeral Song", the record returns to the bare, essential ballad form. "Spirited", on the other hand, is worth the whole album on its own, with its lively woodland chorus, and accordion, piano, drums and percussion moving along the fairy-tale path traced by the classical guitar.

Bests of Season, while still a well-crafted and conceptually inspired record, lacks the evocative power of Come To Greet Me and doesn't mark any real evolution for the Portland singer.

Sitting on the floor, in a small room, amid a chaos of scattered books and papers, there's a woman dressed in violet. She opens a book, apparently at random, and tears out a page. Outside, in the city, a man rakes through what look like the remains of a bonfire of burned books. This is the video for "Younger", a track credited to the voice of Laura Gibson and the arrangements of minimalist Ethan Rose. The two explain that the idea for a collaboration, which came to fruition in 2010's Bridge Carols, grew out of simple conversations and mutual admiration. The result is an amalgam of electronics and minimalism, made up of rustling sounds, bells, glockenspiel hits, synthesizers, and delicate mixes. In this micro-universe, Gibson's small voice drifts about disoriented, wrapped in alienating effects.

"Introduction", whose synthesized background chorus strongly recalls the opening of a Sigur Rós track, the lively "Leaving, Believing", where two overdubbed voices dance tenderly in a Cocorosie-like fashion, and "Sun" and "Glocken", with trills and electronic vibrations worthy of Colleen, stand out as the most expressive moments.

As should be clear by now, nothing new here, certainly, but there's class, and there's taste.

The digital revolution, Facebook, Twitter, file-sharing sites: by 2012, the music industry and the logic of promotion have been completely upended by the internet, online shopping and social networks. For niche artists like Gibson, this upheaval represents an opportunity too good to miss. She herself is well aware of it, writing on her blog's homepage: "I just started using Facebook and Twitter, and while I don't have a clear opinion on them yet, I'm blown away by the power of people sharing links with their friends. So to everyone who found my music through social media (...) I'm deeply grateful for your enthusiasm. It's really amazing."

And it's surely thanks to the internet that the third LP from this anti-diva — so warm and approachable with fans and in interviews — manages to win over a wider audience. Also because La Grande recaptures the inspiration of Come To Greet Me, but with a significant artistic maturity: the songwriting here is immediate, assured and fully rounded.

Meanwhile, the blonde heroine is in the running for "most unexpectedly multi-talented musician of the year": across the album's ten tracks she plays guitar, bass, vibraphone, marimba and marching drum all by herself. Her moves are surrounded by exceptional collaborators, such as Nate Query and Jenny Conlee of the Decemberists and Joey Burns of Calexico. These elements combine in a seamless way, creating an ideal flow for unplugging from the daily grind. The tracks glide by light and just the right length, shifting and contrasting without ever wearing out the listener.

For instance, "La Grande", amid somber strings, sounds straight out of an old western and oddly distorted voices, opens the album on the decisive beat of a marching drum. Then "Milk-Heavy, Pollen Eyed", a calm folk-pop ballad cushioned by bass and vibraphone, arrives unexpectedly. "Lion/Lamb" kicks things off again: a jazzy rhythm and a chorus of woodland sprites, amid trilling violins, horns, sunlight and bright piano notes, in an enchanted prog-rock-forest atmosphere. "Skin, Warming Sink" seems like the usual acoustic meditation for guitar and river — yet, as you'll hear, it's a surprise, revealing itself as the album's hidden gem.

"The Rushing Dark" opens the second half of the record, where the warm momentum of "Red Moon" and "The Fire" (the only truly catchy song on the album, dominated by a vintage pump organ) alternates with the cryptic "Time Is Not" and "Feather Lungs".

"La Grande is a town in Oregon that people mostly just pass through on their way somewhere else, but it has a certain magnetism, a curious energy." That's how Laura Gibson describes the place that inspired her record. On the cover, up top, is a portrait of Chief Joseph, the leader of the Nez Perce tribe, who were driven out by American troops from the Wallowa Valley, which lies east of La Grande.

Paradoxically, this music, spread through digital channels, is itself an invitation to plunge into nature, with its pungent smells, and into intimacy, with its carnality and its taste.

Empire Builder, Laura Gibson's 2016 return, is presented as the album of rebirth, of consecration — recorded and reassembled after the fire that burned down the building where Laura lived, along with all her belongings, in her new home in New York.

And in a way you can feel the weight bearing down on Empire Builder, a weight tied to Laura's whole existence as an artist and musician — perhaps her most ambitious and focused record yet, following her beginnings as what was, all things considered, a fairly "ordinary" songwriter within the contemporary folk landscape (quality notwithstanding).

The dry, percussive arrangement of "The Cause" ends up sounding almost like a statement of artistic identity, resembling the new Adele hit, in both spirit and delivery – and the chorus, too, seems to flatten out into a somewhat easy refrain. The single and title track recalls early Laura Marling, with the same clichés of fragility and strength, major and minor – perhaps too unripe a song to serve as the linchpin of a "mature album".

The whole record, more or less, confirms Gibson's somewhat too "ordinary" inspiration, like the dirge-like "Louis", with a chord progression and vocal line we've heard one too many times before. Or the minimalist sad-folk of "Five-Thirty", which recycles equally dated arrangement ideas, rehashed without originality and without any writing that truly stands out.

On the whole, there's a strong display of craftsmanship (the evocative, airy folk of "The Search For Dark Lake"), paired with ambitious, even bold arrangements (the drive of "Not Harmless"), but not with substantial songwriting. A record that may stand as a solid confirmation, but not as an evolution in Gibson's inspiration.

Contributions by Lorenzo Righetto (“Empire Builder”)

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