Lisa Bastoni’s latest CD How We Want To Live is a study on how to say a lot by keeping a message direct and simple. It is also a study in how to make a listener feel a lot about a song without having a lot of busy instruments or rippling notes. Rather, Bastoni, a western Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter, lets the natural, unaffected quality of her voice convey a lot of emotion by simply being present and strong.
“Nearby” opens the disc with Bastoni’s steady, low key vocal gliding over a gentle accompaniment. Her simple, paired down approach lets her emotive content breathe. Without using grand expression, this singer-songwriter expresses the grandness of her song’s theme in a subtle manner, making it a more effective tune.
Title track “How We Want To Live” rises up from lilting mellow tune to an anthem with just a slight change in Bastoni’s vocal dynamics. She also manages to keep our ears glued to her vocal presence amidst Michael Bean’s crying pedal steel melody that wafts beautifully in the backdrop.
“Silver Line” politely recalls a failed relationship with respect, even though the singer-songwriter describes someone who ends a relationship in a poor manner. While the relationship is in the past, this song, despite its sadness, beautifully describes the need to be with a better partner by contrasting the poor qualities of the ex. Josh Kantor’s stirring organ line and a Sean Staples Wurlitzer provide a fluffy pillow of soulfulness for Bastoni to shift her vocal over.
“Never Gone To You” continues the perfected contentment of this disc. Here. Bastoni adjusts to a slightly more assertive vocal, making her voice hit a bump of support and move forcefully upward, like a kite that suddenly catches an extra burst of wind. Shitting her voice thusly, Bastoni puts more emotive fiber into the song, keeping the listener focused on her strengths without trying to.
Bastoni’s vocal melody carries the listener through “Beautiful Girl,” a lovely, lilting song, like a polite guest showing you around their home. Aside from singing poetically about her daughter and her daughter’s coming childhood and future, this singer-songwriter also sings to the world, assuring us that is all right to feel what we feel. It’s uncanny how Bastoni’s voice rises up in expression without feeling like she is being forceful. Her power is all in what she holds back.
Moving into solid, mid-tempo territory, Bastoni’s “Take The Wheel” is perfectly punctuated with drums and guitar while pedal steel and Wurlitzer lines fill out the space with a sound as beautiful as her own vocal. Bastoni neither belts nor whispers. She keeps her strong vocal presence right in the mid range of dynamics and expression while keeping her own personality in this song vibrant.
Beautifully understated, “The Dogs Of New Orleans” requires Bastoni to stretch her subtle approach, making her voice reach over each meter and grip with a silken glove. She increases her dynamic a notch, and one can feel the emotions lifting upward and the listener gets carried along with the easeful use of power. Kit Buckley’s clarinet whistles a pretty melody in the backdrop as drummer Chris Anzalone and bass player Sean Staples provide a groove completely in touch and sensitive to the currents of this piece.
Feeling more jubilant, “Walk A Little Closer” gets a bounce in its step from Mali Obomsawin’s upright bass. Combined with an understated fiddle line from Isa Burke, Bastoni gets a moving tread that she maneuvers her silky voice over. This tune just makes one to feel good as Bastoni sings sweetly to this jaunty pace.
“Workingman’s Blues” ripples with as much emotion as it ripples with Josh Kantor’s piano and organ notes. Bastoni carries the listener to her lyrical vision of the person who has to work very hard for a living. With a musical tapestry that reminds of Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead beneath her, Bastoni injects just enough verse, with just enough push, to bring her details to life with her sly emotive delivery.
Closing track “Pockets Full Of Sighs” ushers out of the disc with the same gentle aplomb Bastoni employed to usher us in. A tender, almost still acoustic guitar line and a forlorn harmonica that occasionally appears flavor this brief tale of longing and nostalgia.
Bastoni has accomplished a lot with very little on How We Want To Live. Her subtle approach leaves open many possibilities for her to express grand emotion with subtle shifts in tempo, dynamics, and by using the most sensitive accompaniment. Produced and mixed by Sean Staples and mastered by Dave Westner, and recorded at Zippah, Echo Lake, and Wesley Park Studios, How We Want To Live has a crispness of voice and instruments that enhances all that the artists bring to each table.
