In the last 20 years, the most wrenching change from a pop-folk artiste was almost certainly 0304, the 2003 album on which Jewel threw away her acoustic guitar and hit the dancefloor. It was bold, pandering and boldly pandering. By comparison, Here the Blue River is a delicate turn of a volume control.
Then again, Jewel never revisited or assimilated what she tried on 0304, so perhaps Haroula Rose is right to be cautious, especially on what is just her second long-player. And her delicate turn does mare changes from her 2011 debut LP, These Open Roads.
A richer atmosphere is the most noticeable change: The cozy reek of the coffeehouse is less present, and the production—by Jim White, Zac Rae and Luke Top, whose résumés include gigs for Cass McCombs and Gnarls Barkley—favors skies over ceilings.
Rose doesn’t strain for the stratospheres of those skies, although she rides thermals of her voice’s breathiness to glide under them.
She moves like desert winds through the Calexico-reminiscent shuffle of “Margo,” floats upon ripples of banjo and woodwinds within “The River (Drifting)” and presses face and fingertips against the panes of “Moon and Waves,” which views natural phenomena from inside a cottage Fiona Apple might have built.
She also rolls in a meadow of jangly sentimentality with “Grass Stains,” brushes against several cage clichés and polite folk-rock tropes with “Songbird” and is the portrait of a Sarah McLachlan MOR aspirant with the piano ballad “This Old House.”
In lesser moments, she might be auditioning songs for more TV and movie placements; her greater moments are not soundtrack fodder. Here the Blue River is a long way from 0304, but it is not a long way from hinting at a bolder, and not at all pandering, Haroula Rose.
