LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE
There’s A Last Time For Everything
Roche, Lucy Wainwrigh

www.lucywainwrightroche.com
 

Lucy Wainwright Roche, the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche, and stepsister of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, continues to plow her own ground. Recorded in Nashville, her second full-length solo album, There’s a Last Time for Everything grew out of what was intended-to-be only a few tracks with multi-instrumentalist/co-producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin. Good thing – the eleven tracks hold together, not as a random collection of songs, but as a cohesive, album-length, emotional journey. Although she is not as quirky a songwriter as her parents, Roche’s songs nevertheless speak from the depths of her heart. Setting her light-as-air vocals, and tenderhearted lyrics, to dreamy, atmospheric arrangements played by bassist Chris Donohue (Emmylou Harris), drummer Allison Miller (Brandi Carlisle), and Hamlin, the Greenwich Village-born former schoolteacher looks back at a year of falling in and out of love. Snow falls during the opening track, “The Year Will End Again,” as she confronts her “hesitation in everything we do” and “desolation never out of view.” The mood takes a more hopeful leap with the second song, “Hide and Seek,” with Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, as Roche sings “I fell in love last year, it’s not a thing I do a lot.” She sings about finding “the light in your eyes” during “Quiet Line,” a duet with Mary Chapin Carpenter. Roche provides support to a grieving friend, during “Look Busy,” and looks at how relationships change during the title track. A stripped-down, guitar and vocal rendition of “Call Your Girlfriend” out-does the impact of Robyn’s 2010 electronic dance music (EDM) hit. The closing tune, “Under the Gun,” sung with Robby Hecht, reinforces the album’s tone of lost love, departed friends, and constant change.

— Craig Harris