Julie Doiron
Heart and Crime (Jagjaguwar)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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Julie Doiron has an absolutely exquisite voice, deep and sonorous and soft and melancholy, frustratingly impossible to do complicated tasks to because her music just fills and dominates a room. And, to make it even better, instead of pairing her wonderful voice with a huge electric band that would just drown her out and ruin the delicate quality that makes her singing so special, the only instrumentation on here is a spare guitar, accompanied at times with a piano and/or harmonica. The resulting album is just pure joy to listen to--even though it's an awfully melancholy collection of songs, there's this wonderful current of wistful hope bubbling throughout the album that keeps it from ever being maudlin or truly sad.

© 2002 - Holly Day