Linda McLean

CD: No Language
(Bongo Beat Records)

NOW Magazine REVIEW, December 2005

With a clear, resonant voice, ringing guitar overtones, subtle country-leaning details like mandolin and bassist Maury Lafoy, Linda McLean's No Language occupies a nice niche between the gravel-road twang of Kathleen Edwards and the expansive prairie rock of Jann Arden (Lafoy also reguarly makes up half of Arden's touring rhythm section.) That may sound like a strange mix, but McLean pulls it off, mostly because she writes from the perspective of a mature woman's woman. Unlike Edward's spitfire bar-brawl drinking songs, these tunes have the ache and retrospective wisdom of a dame in her prime, and unlike Arden's MOR anthems, McLean's unafraid to root her writing in specificity or add political heft, like Calling's anti-war message, to her lyrics. McLean's heartbreak is about the jarring upheaval of divorce, not a lover's spat; when she sings about” broken dreams” on All Around, you wonder what she's had to sacrifice for her family. Pretty and pensive.

Sarah Liss, Music Editor

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