Letitia VanSant: October Artist of the Month

Letitia VanSant

Circadian

 

 

Letitia VanSant comes at us from Baltimore with her sophomore release Circadian. Though you could mistakenly peg her as just another singer with a pretty voice, stop and listen carefully. First, there’s a bit of upper palate growl, but it’s not half as (if I might) biting as some of her lyrics. But let’s start with something sweet, the title trackCircadian. It opens with some high-range warbling that’s almost Japanese in melody and tone, but its theme is indeed the daily cycles of light fluctuation, though with a twist. She tells us that firefly mating and bird migrations get confused by the “halo” of city lights, and then adds a kicker: And they’re lost and lonely as I am. Without getting preachy, VanSant asks us to notice how our gadgets, machines, and noise make us deaf to the music of the world made before me and how it might be a good idea if lives leaned more toward natural circadian places and paces. Yep. That’s the kind of peace we feel on summer nights by a campfire with fireflies illuminating the woods.

 

VanSant has created an album that is very personal, but also one that balances light and dark. “You Can’t Put My Fire Out” is about her survival from sexual abuse and her arrangement is one that toggles between rising anger and a defiant determination to move on: I’m taking back my apologies/For every time that you hurt me/Your red hands I can plainly see/You can’t put my fire out. One might think of this song as the companion to “Tin Man,” which is melodically softer but is a takedown of society’s views of manliness. It’s not an original idea that men who buy into stereotypes damage themselves, but VanSant thinks that that deep down they know it: Even the tin man was searching for a heart. “Rising Tide,” another tough song, explores her father’s exposure to Agent Orange and she’s not in a forgiving mood: They pour all this money down the hole in your side/All the money on Wall Street, these tears can’t dry/They’ve got plans for our pockets, cigarettes for our lungs/Poison for our babies and bullets for our guns.

 

VanSant is often labeled as a folk artist, but she’s also in a honkytonk band. You can hear some of her cowgirl chops on “Spilt Milk,” where she turns her critical eye onto herself for the times in which she should have seen she was letting love spill away but, I was too careless to know. There’s also a bit of country to “Something Real,” a reflection on the death of Jimmy LaFave (1955-2017). She didn’t know LaFave, though his impact resonates in lines such as Someone give me a song to sing that sounds like something real…. Mostly, VanSant recognizes that life offers no magic wand to make things as we want them to be. That’s the theme of a song whose title says it all, “Most of Our Dreams Don’t Come True.”

 

Circadian features well-written songs. One of VanSant’s smarter moves was to work with Mary Gauthier’s producer Neilson Hubbard (who is also a guest drummer on the album). Hubbard should offer seminars on how to fill spaces without drowning the artist in echoey soup that highlights the session players instead of the headliner. His is a case of less is more. VanSant’s voice may sound a tad too sweet at times, but to come full circle, listen carefully.   

 

Rob Weir