Love these songs! What a variety of styles and stories.

Every once in a while you run across an artist that makes you want to buy a thousand copies of their work and share it with everyone you know. 'Pretty rare, that, but in Lisa Atkinson's most recent effort, the allure of the songs to draw you in is so sweet (not sacrine, mind-you) that it's both a spiritual experience as well as a musical one. And clearly one on whose behalf it's easy to evangelize. Lisa's tunes and lyrics are expressions of both her effusive buoyance and a deeper sadness (if-not an outright shadow) that appears evident even in photos, as if Jackson Browne were speaking directly to her when he sang, "...there was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes..." Without over-psychologizing, one can find hints here and there of the origins of both the sadness and delight, in such songs as Another Long Day, and Whisperville Mountain, respectively. Lisa's complete persona comes across as it has for so many years in her live performances and her program on local listener-supported radio: She never (but never) phones it in; giving everything she has; revealing (nearly) everything she is; and letting the chips fall where they may. As this site's notes proclaim, Lisa's work truly is genius - a term more easily bantered about than it should be - for in this case it's about the rarest of talents that quietly, but with all the most natural sense in the world, hones and crafts ones art - to the benefit of the work itself, and the listener. As George Harrison said of Smokey Robinson, "I want to thank you, Lord, for giving us Pure (in this case) Lisa...!" Amen.

Beautiful - absolutely beautiful