Saplings is Kim Barlow's newest solo release, and reflects her new musical directions with simplicity and clarity.
“Songs with a fascinating and spare, almost childlike tone that revolves around uplifting stories and organic imagery.”
— Edmonton Journal
“Charmingly rustic and whimsical.”
— Calgary Sun
“Kim Barlow has achieved a balance between sophistication and ruggedness.”
— The Province (Vancouver)
“Her songs are rustic fairy tales with touches of heartbreak and wilderness.”
— The Valley Sentinel (Valemount BC)
Saplings is a heartfelt offering of songs to cheer and encourage, also containing explorations of the natural world and the other-worldly. A slender, delicate assemblage of thoughtful compositions, accompanied by Bryden Baird’s elegant trumpet and flugel horn arrangements, Melisa Devost on backup vocals and ukulele, as well as Ryan Driver, Jean Martin and Justin Haynes on synth, pedal bass and electric guitar.
After honing her banjo chops beside a campfire in the Yukon and exploring a career in horse-logging, Kim Barlow embarked on an eccentric musical career that has taken her from Inuvik to the UK; and from Yackandandah, Australia, to Cape Spear, Newfoundland. She has recorded four CDs of her own, and also performs with Annie Lou, an all-girl hillbilly band, and Spring Breakup, a duo she started with Mathias Kom of The Burning Hell. She’s a two-time Juno nominee; with her second CD, Gingerbread, and most recently with Annie Lou, for their 2010 self-titled release.
Kim Barlow’s songs are wry and impassioned, deft distillations of the beautiful and absurd world she inhabits. Playing guitar and frailing banjo, Barlow creates rich and unexpected settings for her fables of lost children, allegories for love and loss, and examinations of the natural world and the other-worldly.
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