Joanne Lurgio’s third album Rise From The Storm is a fully realized collection of songs focused on recovery and survival. Every number focuses on loss, struggle, and spiritual injury. Never maudlin, Rhode Island singer-songwriter Lurgio presents each one as a story of hope, as there is almost always a way to change course, even if the only course is acceptance. Wrapping her singer-songwriter themes with flinty, gritty, emotive roots style instrumentation, she presents these nuggets as something wholly organic and earthy.
Opening with “Going With The Flow,” Lurgio makes clear she’s a survivor. She offers an assertive philosophy with a steadfast vocal approach that makes you know she means it. Dollops of accordion, mandolin, upright bass, percussion, harmony vocals, and acoustic guitar surround Lurgio’s voice with warm roots notes while her lush vocal unfurls her theme with beauty and grace.
“I Feel Rich” moseys along with a flinty, rootsy guitar and a country groove. Lurgio sings over it with a touch of sass and a pound of confidence. She carries the listener through this ditty with her naturally rich vocal timbre waltzing to her lilting, lyrical twists and turns. She turns her life story into an anthem of personal pride for all that she has, even though it might not be considered “rich” to others.
Title track “Rise From The Storm” benefits greatly from a lonesome fiddle melody lingering in the backdrop. A slight push from brushed, down tempo drums and plucky upright bass give Lurgio a platform from which she can set sail her soft caress of a voice. The lyrics are forward looking, leaving no doubt that Lurgio has left behind the tatters of a bad experience. The song conjures an important feeling of triumph over adversity as Lurgio casually lets her lyrical descriptions unfold.
A shuffling beat pushes “Young Summer Hues” through the listener’s consciousness like images from a motion picture. An unmistakable feeling of movement perfectly captures Lurgio’s sentiment that the days of our youth are behind us and moving further behind as we grow older. Her up-tempo singing and cooing inject this trip through memory lane with another sense of smooth, flowing wonderment, and it makes it easy to get swept away with everything going on here.
“Back In The Day” offers lush fiddle work, the fiddle crying out a secondary layer of emotion as Lurgio lulls one into her world of reflection. Recollecting how she and her childhood friend would dream of their futures, Lurgio brings us vividly into those precious moments. Her vocal sustains are rife with emotion and her lyrics are universal. We can all recall being children who dreamt of the kind of adults we’d one day become. Anybody who listens carefully to his track and truly takes it in will travel “back to the days of the simple and pure.”
“Pennies” skips along a palpably good percussion track, one that boosts a nudge of sweet fiddle and accordion. Lurgio uses numerous penny metaphors to make her point that big things come from smaller ones. Yet, a closer listen uncovers a layer of loss and sorrow in the tender instrumentation and even in the tender vocal delivery. She sings of “sugar and spice, all things nice,” yet the listener cannot help but feeling that pennies are not the salvation she proclaims. Lurgio balances well this contrast between the emotional content of her song what she’s saying in the instrumentation.
Lurgio offers another quaint ditty with “Kick Off My Shoes.” A winsome lyrical treat glistens with Lurgio’s lilting vocal application over an amicable sound comprised of roots instruments, especially a brittle banjo line that makes it all feel more down to earth.
Lurgio eulogizes her grandmother in “Ursula,” describing the matriarch’s struggles, working as a teenager in a factory, becoming a hit at the local dance parlor and finding life long romance with Lurgio’s grandfather. Ursula comes across as a larger than life figure, larger even than the times she lived in. Voice, mandolin, fiddle, and a gentle rhythm section come together here in something huge in meaning, reverential, and touching. Have some tissues ready when you’re getting into this one.
Lost love gets an earnest examination in “When This Heartache Ends.” Here, the sorrow comes from mourning, mourning for what she thought her life would be like before a relationship ended. Lurgio uses well a subdued vocal delivery. It makes the listener fully realize all that she’s holding back. She doesn’t know, in this song, when the heartache will end, and that well conjured sense of not knowing for certain where one’s life is headed builds emotional grist. Lurgio’s earnest delivery of the lyrics over a bump of upright bass, a tender acoustic guitar rhythm, and a forlorn fiddle melody make the listener feel what the song is all about.
“Shone Your Light” moves along a jaunty path. Lurgio sings this one in a brighter tone. Her upbeat appreciation for a mentor makes for a pleasant ditty. Her voice is as lovely as a butterfly hovering over a small garden of organ, percussion, and woody low end.
“Matter Of Time” has a bit of an edge. Lurgio sings over a flinty electric guitar line, her sustains loaded with honky tonk oomph. There’s as much grit in her vocal as there is in that feisty guitar melody and together they’re packing enough sass to make this song something you wouldn’t want to argue with.
“Gun Metal Sky” carries itself like a gunfighter on his way to what might be his final shoot out. Lurgio belts this one with power. She draws a haunting portrait of a man haunted by the ghosts of the many men he’s killed. It isn’t just the sound Lurgio creates with her rangy voice and her adept backing musicians and their spooky, out on the range tones. It’s in the spaces in between the notes where this one builds itself. Like any serious drama, this song makes one feel the weight of what’s going on with a character.
“Finding My Way” is a song of hope and encouragement. Lurgio turns a sailing ship into a metaphor for staying true to one’s course in life. Singing brightly over John Juxo’s merry sweep of organ swirls, she turns this gentle rain of notes into a personal anthem. She also makes her listener feel her sense of quest, like she’s putting you in the front row seat at a show.
Lurgio officially closes out this recovery and survival concept album with “Silence,” a song that wraps things up quietly. She takes a gentle hand to rebuking herself and her would be intended would never trying for each other. Her contemplative lyrics shine as she caresses them with a warm, affectionate vocal. Fiddle player Cathy Clasper-Torch unfurls another layer of forlorn emotion in the background with her ever so sensitive melodic line.
Lurgio adds at the end of her disc a bonus track titled “Won’t Ever Quit” which she once released as a single. Written to help support the efforts of the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation to promote breast cancer awareness, it was also a 5K theme song with proceeds to benefit the foundation. It’s an emotive call for unity to promote the concept of women’s health while remembering those who were lost to the disease. Lurgio balances well the concept of memorial with hope for the future.
Lurgio has much to be proud of here. Rise From The Storm is a powerful album. It’s packed with solid emotional content while delivering all of those messages with adept touches of voice and instrumentation. Lurgio didn’t go it alone. She has many of New England’s finest musicians along for the ride. Duke Robillard plays his sweet notes on tracks 2 and 11 while Mike “Scatman” Sullivan slathers track 12 with greasy smooth slide guitar. Marc Douglas Berardo, Lara Herscovitch and Vance Gilbert are present and accounted for as backing vocalists. This album is a first class recording and it will likely gain Lurgio much recognition throughout 2015.
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