Just listen to Rachel Rose and then buy the album. Because I know you, yes you reader, are tired of the mundane and looking for something that is that hidden little thing that you treasure and keep secreted away for those driving times.
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Once upon a time, I went to a friend’s wedding, and heard a young woman with an angel’s voice belt out Bob Dylan’s “Wedding Song” like nobody’s business. Not only was it far and away the most beautiful rendition of “Wedding Song” that I have ever heard, it was a moment of musical magic that I will remember forever. The singer was Jaspar Loes (now Jaspar Lepak). And this album includes, finally, her version of “Wedding Song” -- worth the price of admission all by itself, but not by any means the only reason that I love Make a Pretty Thing, her fourth album and her best yet.

If you don’t know Jaspar, this album (her first under her married name) is a great introduction. She has been compared to Johnny Cash, and to Simon & Garfunkel. She reminds me more of a twentysomething version of Nanci Griffith (without the Texas twang) or Sarah McLachlan. Maybe the way that she describes herself is best: “Her sound is a country hinged folk with a hint of rock and roll. Her lyrics are wishful and wide open. Jaspar wears her heart on her words, and the stories she weaves bring a delicate sensitivity to human longings for love and for home.”

If you already know Jaspar and her music, then you’ll appreciate Make a Pretty Thing both for the familiar and for the different. Like her three earlier albums, this outing introduces characters from the singer’s life rendered in warm, whimsical, and insightful lyrical portraits: “Rachael Rose” (“she marries her eyes / to the home in your soul ... has you under her spell / and you can’t help but follow”), “Morning Glory” (“She drives me crazy .... Sometimes I hate her. / But mostly, mostly, it feels good to move my feet .... When we are old and our husbands are dead, we’ll find ourselves around this bed / Giggling at what could have been and has been and might have been instead of what might be ....”), “Bring My Mind” (“In the Iron Range he built his home / No running water and the freezer’s full of deer. / And every night, he drinks a beer and calls the day the best one here”). And like her earlier albums, Make a Pretty Thing displays the poetry of a youthful seeker coming to terms with the past, with life, with mortality, on songs like “All That I Believe” (“I’ve been holding to your / lips like they were dripping truth into my mouth”) and “One Place to Shine” (“so I’ll quiet my heart with a line from a poem: / the darkness brings a different kind of home .... I lost the keys to the kingdom long ago”).

But this album also branches out in important and compelling directions. For the first time, Jaspar has recorded music that she didn’t write herself -- not only Dylan’s “Wedding Song,” but also “Little Child,” a collaboration with the poet Khary Jackson. More to the point, her semiautobiographical songs -- which have been among her most provocative -- now embrace her recent marriage and a more contented but still slightly quizzical view of the universe: “Find Me a Cowboy” (“And I’ll be your angel / I’ll know the way / I’ll be the fool who will stay”), “Clark and Foster” (“Well my faith was as high as a clear blue sky / And my dreams were as bright as the sun / When I met you at the corner of Clark Street and Foster / And I knew that you were the only one”). But the edgy, angry side still shines through a bit too, especially on the beautiful title track (“I wake in the morning with anger enough to survive. / Then the phone rings, your voice quickly cuts / to the time we were babies / in a church that didn’t teach us to trust / our own minds”) and the wry “Cruel to Myself” (“I’ve been fighting all the demons out of my soul. / Trouble is the demons have been making me whole....”).

Jaspar has an extraordinary creative energy in her; I doubt that even she is fully in touch with it yet. It’s what keeps me interested in her music: I went to her first concert (well, the first one that I went to) because she sang such a beautiful rendition of “Wedding Song,” but I have kept coming back because I have a feeling about where she’s headed and what an interesting journey it will be. And I have heard her sing a few songs that she has written since Make a Pretty Thing, and now I can’t wait for the next album.
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A few very stand out songs make this worth while!  Not quite as fluid as live but i'm not complaining...good on you!
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LOVE IT!!! A perfect combination of playfulness and thoughtfulness.  Makes you reflect on life and revel in it.  New sounds that make me feel happy like old folk music does.  GOOD STUFF.
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