Hints & Guesses

The album “Hints & Guesses” is the first full-length album from Alanna-Marie Boudreau, a young musician from New York who was recently touring here in San Diego.  About a month ago I received a copy of Alanna’s new album in advance of its release this September (iTunes, Website), so after a few weeks of listening to the album in my car, I wanted to share my impression of it.

The title of the album comes from a line in a TS Elliot poem, The Four Quartets, which speaks about the glimpses we get of something beautiful and awe-inspiring, but which hasn’t yet been fully revealed. In an interview on her YouTube channel, Alanna compared it to seeing the early morning sunlight before the sun itself has risen, explaining it as “the sense of home-sickness that you can’t really describe”. These are themes to which a restless pilgrim can certainly relate!

Wise Words

After hearing one of Alanna’s other songs, “Sorry”, several months ago I posted a lyric for “Wise Words On Wednesday”. I can assure you that the songs on the new album are equally replete with proverbial wisdom. For example, in the opening track “Davey”, we hear the following lines:

Everything that’s terrible is something that needs love
and anyone who’s hurt you has been hurt
and nobody is as evil as they seem to be
but hatred surely makes them worse

There are many more examples I could quote and you’ll probably see them posted here over the coming Wednesdays…

Fine Music

Over the past few years, I have become a fan of quite a few musicians on YouTube, eagerly awaiting each new video/song on their YouTube channel. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, when the artist has released a studio album, I’ve been rather disappointed. This has typically been because I’ve felt the long-awaited album was over-produced and over-orchestrated. Having been captivated by the artist’s music in simplicity, I’ve felt that something was lost upon entering the recording studio. However, I’m extremely pleased to say that this isn’t the case with “Hints & Guesses”.

Some of the songs remain fairly unadorned. “Dappled things”, for example, has very simple instrumentation, with Alanna mostly being accompanied by the sound of birds in a field, rather like Mary Poppins 🙂 . In contrast, other songs have have quite a bit of ornamentation, but each time it is done with an extremely delicate hand. A perfect example of the well-crafted orchestration is the song “I’ll be your woman”, which starts with vocals and a few simple, isolated chords on a piano. Bit-by-bit the accompaniment is filled out, culminating in a wonderful Jazz trumpet solo which made this former trumpeter extremely happy 🙂

Different Influences

This weekend I drove up to Riverside with my friend Carrie and we listened to Alanna’s album on the drive. On more than one occasion Carrie would ask if we were now listening to a different album and artist. She said this because of the broad range of musical genres which are found across the album. As you listen, you hear a wide range of influences: 50’s doo-wop, celtic etc., yet Alanna somehow manages to take elements from these different styles but still somehow manages to produce a sound that is very much her own.

Much more could be said about the different songs on the album, such as the brilliantly titled Mr Wonderful, but I think I’ll end things here. The album will soon be available for purchase, both on iTunes and through Alanna’s website. If you can’t wait that long, her EP “Hands In The Land” is available for purchase now. Until the album is released, you can stay up-to-date by subscribing to her YouTube channel and and liking her Facebook page.

09/04/14 UPDATE: The album has now been released! Purchase it through iTunes or buy a physical copy using Love Good Music.