The wonderful Lanie Gardner is set to release her highly-anticipated debut album this coming Friday. I have to admit that outside of her track for the Twisters movie, I haven’t really heard of her until now, but when I got sent through the album I knew I had to check it out and see what I thought of it! I loved ‘Chasing the Wind’, so let’s dive right in and see if that is more of the same!
The opener starts us off in surprisingly chilled-out fashion, with a simple acoustic guitar riff that immediately gives off Jack Johnson/Newton Faulkner vibes. Lanie’s incredible vocals soon come in over the top, feeling powerful even while clearly being more soft and subdued. They fit perfectly over the guitar, and the lyrics are pretty fantastic from the offset. The whole song is at the same sort of level too, feeling like the perfect blend of Megan Moroney and Julian Taylor. It’s the perfect way to set the tone for an album like this too, and is a great song!
‘Lord Knows’ has a similar vibe to it, but does have a bit more of a stomping beat to it with the percussion. I enjoy the dynamics to it too, it feeling like it builds more and more throughout. Lyrically it’s a bit much for me, but as a song in general it’s fantastic, and one that easily makes it onto our playlist!
The lyrics in ‘One Day’ are once again incredible, and the track itself is an amazing pop-country ballad. It almost has a late 90s/early 2000s feel to it with the vocal melodies, giving off everything from Paula Cole to Macy Grey. It’s another massive highlight track of the album! The same could be said for ‘Shadows’ and ‘Lady in the Sky’. All are great, pop-leaning roots/folk tracks, and are all real interesting listens.
‘Cry’ somehow had a bit more of both a Western, a jazz and a rock edge to Lanie’s usual sound, and it all combined together surprisingly perfectly. The track had a darker edge to it, which I loved, and it has a different sound to it when compared to the rest of the album. It almost gives off Bond song vibes, if that makes any sense to anyone? Suave and darker and epic. It almost gave off slight Jody Blount vibes too, as niche a reference as that is! I love everything about this track, and it may very well be my favourite on the album! It has a real epic feel by the end, the instrumentation making the track feel massive, and Lanie pushes her vocals more than most of the rest of the release. The highlights just keep on coming!
The rest of the tracks have the same chilled-out vibes as the rest of the album. All of them are of course incredible songs again, with ‘Cry me a River’ being a huge pop hit in the making. And all of them fit the vibe and style of the album perfectly, with ‘Neon Notions’ being a fantastic, ballad-like closer to wind things out on.
Overall: This is a damn good release! As you can probably tell throughout the article, I’ve struggled to define quite what genre it fits into, instead simply deciding it’s ‘good’! There are two or three tracks on here that are real standouts and ones that I’ll listen to a lot moving forward. And Lanie really carves her own sound and niche out with every track on the release. She could easily a huge future star in the music industry, and this album has more gently than set her off on that path!
The Score: 8/10