Source: http://ventsmagazine.com
After a long wait since her 2013 release ‘Pushin’ Against A Stone‘, Valerie June is back with a new album titled, ‘The Order of Time.’ This genre-bending album pulls influence from a collage of sources, from southern gospel to folk to soul, to create a beautiful piece of work. Following on the same general sounds of her last release, June delivers once again to her listeners an album with soul and depth without losing a youthful pulse.
The album opens with the track ‘Long Lonely Road‘, which has clear folk influence, following the trend of the new folk revival that music has seen over the past few years. This folk influence touches in other parts of the album as well, in songs such as ‘The Front Door‘ and ‘Two Hearts’, which all use a folksy acoustic guitar sound and heavy percussions to keep the instrumentals of these tracks grounded. Tracks on the album like ‘Love Once Made You‘ and ‘Man Done Wrong‘ present the modern twang of alt-country while tracks like ‘Slip Slide On By‘ are reminiscent of soul ballads from the 1960’s, making this album hard to pin down to just one genre.
But in eliminating the confinements of a genre when creating the album, June allows her unique vocal abilities to shine through by demonstrating how versatile her voice can be. Lyrically, the tracks on the album find depth in what is simplistic, speaking on the universal but complex topics of love, loss, life and pain in a simplified but soulful and real way that one may find easy to connect to.
Overall Rating Out of 10: 7/10
