REVIEW: Rose Cousins, ‘Stray Birds’
Rose Cousins – ‘Stray Birds’ (EP)
Old Farm Pony Records
A new surprise EP from one of Canada’s brightest singer-songwriters? Yes, please. Oh, she’s covering some of her good friends and heroes? This includes Gordon Lightfoot? Well, don’t mind if I just start weeping my face off.
Stray Birds, the new EP from Halifax’s Rose Cousins is a small, quiet celebration in contrast to its predecessor. The beautiful We Have Made a Spark, was, indeed, a spark of a celebration for Cousins and her musician friends in Boston, where she made that album and which she calls her second home.
It’s nice to hear Cousins pull back a bit on this release to show off some of her friends’ songs and tell us about some of her heroes. The EP opens with Cousins slaying a jaw-droppingly gorgeous cover of Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”. No one else need cover this song again – the woman nailed it.
The two covers of her songwriter friends are “Tired Eyes” by Mark Erelli and “Shake” by Lori McKenna, both among Boston’s finest. It’s nice to see that Cousins is not done paying homage to the fantastic Boston/Cambridge music community.
Another surprised on Stray Birds, is her cover of “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, which is fun to play for someone who doesn’t know it’s Tina Turner’s biggest hit until Cousins slides into the chorus.
The two original compositions on the EP include “The Farmer’s Wife”, perhaps referring to Cousins’ time growing up on a farm in Prince Edward Island, and the standout title track – a pretty country sounding song with great additions of banjo (Charlie Rose) and fiddle (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes).
Stray Birds was recorded over the course of two days at the Dimension Sound Studio in Boston. While it seems like the spotlight is more on Cousins this time around, she does have some of Boston’s finest players on this release, including Zachariah Hickman, Kevin Barry, Duke Levine, and the aforementioned, Rose and Keith-Hynes. These gentleman and lady are careful to add subtle and sweet layers to the already well-crafted songs.
Cousins claims that her favorite part of the EP is the cover art, which is a self-developed black and white photo of her father’s hands holding a new chick from their farm. Cousins broke her elbow over the winter, which gave her opportunity to learn how to develop black and white photos. The gentle image on the cover tends to reflect the songs on this lovely collection that leaves the listener satisfied, yet anticipating this brilliant performer’s next move.
