#firetrail

You’ll likely notice Durant’s voice first, but she is also an accomplished pianist. In 2015, the New York Times documented her stubborn insistence on bringing her own instrument, a Tom Thumb upright, to gigs around the city. She lives in Topanga Canyon, in the environs of Los Angeles, now, but she continues to rely on the lush, evocative sounds of a traditional, acoustic piano. It flickers and subtly rollicks through twilit “Smoking Your Chain,” amid the surge and roll of rock instruments. It inserts quick flourishes and reaffirming chords in the single “If Love Had a Name.” It slips shimmering, romantic runs into the title track. There are lots of other sounds—some keyboard derived like organ trills and synth washes—others harder to place. Still piano is a big factor in Firetrail, and a positive one.

“Castle Rock” will remind you the most of Joanna Newsom, with its bare tremble of vocal sound enmeshed in grand abstractions of percussion, synths and piano. Durant commands the space, fragile though she may be, taking control of orchestral vastness with losing the close, tender sweetness of her delivery. The mix of sounds is very, very effective, enveloping and enlarging Durant’s songs without overwhelming them, and for that, I suppose, we can thank Malone. Firetrail juxtaposes the small and delicate with baroque overload but never loses sight of the tiny beauty at its center.