Tai Shan – Wildflower Moon (self-released)

23 August 2024

Like all great music, TaishanSong-crafting is about much more than just molding sounds and styles into new sonic forms. While she has managed to weave a distinctive sound that draws on folk and jazz, Americana and even indie pop, creating a blend of music that is both authentic and infectious, deftly woven but easily accessible, it is the additional, less tangible qualities that bring the music to life.

It's the things in life – motherhood, travel, personal reflection, wanderlust and the comfort of family – that form the musical glue that holds the nuanced notes and poetic lyrics together. And the result of all of these factors is a wonderfully ironic contradiction – never before has an album made you want to simultaneously hug your family and hit the highway in search of adventure.

“Road Back To Me” is a wonderful piece of roots pop, so much so that you can imagine both Taylor Swift And The Dixie Chicks They fight tooth and nail to get their hands on it. And if “My Station” is one of those perfect, genre-defying ballads, then songs like “Jump On In” are groovy, brilliant blues-rock classics.

However, it is an album that relies on nuance rather than noise, on delicacy rather than dynamics, as the gorgeous ambient timbre and pathos of “How It Flew (The Kite Song)” and the warm soul-jazz of “Lullaby Rendezvous” perfectly demonstrate.

Sitting somewhere between Nora Jones later shore excursions and Billie Holidaythe finesse, Wildflower Moon is that rare thing, a modern album that can compete with the classics of the past.

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