专辑简介

Chain, Red Shoes, and Stone is the semi-solo project of Davis Vigneault, a blues/rock/folk guitarist and vocalist from Boston. The songs have the subdued vocal and rhythmic fingerpicking of Jose Gonzalez, the deeply layered vocal harmonies of Mountain Man, the vibrant, clear-eyed tone of The Tallest Man on Earth, and the lyricism of The Low Anthem. The music is also heavily influenced by blues recordings from as late as Skip James and Nina Simone, and as early as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Memphis Minnie, and occasionally borrows fingerpicking motifs and harmonic structures by Mr. High-Lonesome himself, Roscoe Holcomb.

"Emma-Liz Sings the Blues" is the project's debut album, recorded between Boston, DC, and LA. True to the "lay-it-bear" philosophy Davis chose for the album at the outset, the instrumentation is strikingly sparse--a strong lead vocal, bathed in harmony vocals, above a single, mostly fingerpicked guitar. Thematically, the album is at once domestic, ambitious, and decidedly literary. Existence in, departure from, and return to the home in the "Little Sister" songs is juxtaposed with the transition from sanity to insanity and back again in "Lullaby," and "Bluebell Meadow." By "Emma-Liz" and "The Stove, the Lights, the Radio," house-and-city has converged more or less entirely with reason-and-instability. Davis explores these intimate and sometimes explosive topics subtly, sometimes casually, in a way that is neither self-righteous nor overbearing.