Search - Marilyn Duncan :: Departures

Marilyn steps well outside the folk singer box with the songs and arrangements on this album, which cross genres to explore both her and the band's full expressive range. Themes of loss and passage run through the record, but the title song itself reveals how far those themes can take us, as it turns itself over to reveal both the anger and untouchable quiet of grief. Departures integrates exuberant, playful energy--which comes in jazz, folk, country, and other flavors on songs like Fly, 31 Years, Big Blue Heron, Eachother's Passersby, and Fishy Fishy --with the wistful melancholy of Evey's Song, Safe Harbor, Passing Present, and Darkening Sky. The result is a beautifully cathartic album that brings together jokes, regrets, toe-tapping, nostalgia, grief, and hope. Marilyn's passion for story is here as well, most notably in Wiley Herman Duncan, where the band rocks for all ten minutes of the title character's larger-than-life life story. The backing musicians include all four members of fellow Soona Songs act Radiophonic (Brian Aldsworth, Graham Duncan, Michael Galante, and Daniel Loyd), as well as Gina Forsyth of Malvinas fame on fiddle.