KAT EDMONSON, WAY DOWN LOW

Back in 2010, Kat Edmonson, enchanted with her debut album Take To The Sky. On that album she took classic standards and contemporary songs and reworked them just enough to build bridges between songs that spanned decades. It was a special album in part because of her voice and because of her song choices and arrangements.

Now, Edmonson is back with her follow up album Way Down Low. Here she takes a bit of a departure from her first album. Gone are the reworked standards and contemporary songs, like the Cure's Just Like Heaven. Instead a perfect blend of Edmonson's self-written and purposefully chosen songs meld together to produce what she has described as a kind of 'breakup record.' Having this central theme, based on a breakdown in a relationship and her move from Austin to NYC, gives the album a more immediate purpose than her first album and it provides the listener with a direction and journey to follow through her songs.

As on Take To The Sky, Kat's voice shines like no contemporary female artist of her generation. There is a timeless quality to her voice. As she weaves her stories and songs of love and loss, Edmondson's vocal style can sound at once like it fits in quite nicely with a bevy of mid-century female recording artists, and contemporaries who have the best of today's pop sensibilities. Mostly, Edmonson has just an amazing natural gift for filling the musical space that her voice occupies with warmth, grace, restraint, and subtlety. It create an emotional tie to her songs and lyrics that grabs a hold of the listener and simply won't let go. While this is not a completely lost art today, there are simply fewer and fewer artists that transcend today's musical trends and styles and own their own unique space. Edmonson is certain one of them.