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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Brigitte DeMeyer And Will Kimbrough’s “Mockingbird Soul”

Will Kimbrough is a journeyman guitarist and songwriter with countless solo and collaborative credits to his name. Acclaimed vocalist Brigitte DeMeyer, though younger than Kimbrough, is approaching her second decade of music making. While Mockingbird Soul isn’t the duo’s first collaboration, it’s their first album as a credited pair, and it showcases their solo and shared talents quite cleanly and pleasurably. Both Kimbrough and DeMeyer definitely sound more at home in the better-appointed spaces in the American Tower Of Song, and the record works best when it fully embraces that crisp, clean aesthetic; “The Juke,” which tries tentatively for a dirty-blues vibe, seems by contrast the LP’s most mannered moment. More successful are the moments when the pair leans into the bright runs and clean vocals that show off their impressive technical chops. Of these, the slide-heavy title cut, the sly, jazzy “Carpetbagger’s Lullaby” and “Honey Bee,” and the moving letting-go story of “I Can Hear Your Voice” are particular highlights.

—Eric Waggoner