Molly Pinto Madigan is at it again. After releasing an epic tale, progressive folk album a few years back, she now jumps headlong into Romeo & Juliet In The City, an album that takes an unflinching look at relationships, attraction, and loss with every song story told with layers of fine songwriting ideas.
“Pilgrims” opens the album with Madigan’s soft vocal glide just barely kissing the soundscape from her support players. With measured coos, lovely sustains, and a considerate amount of vocal at a time, she coats all with a tender sweetness. Beneath her voice a swaying percussion carries a nimble upright bass and a sentimental piano chord. Together, voice and instruments weave a warmly textured song that one cannot help but want to take in for how all its elements form together.
Title track “Romeo & Juliet In The City” finds Madigan’s voice wrapped tastefully and loosely around an accented guitar line. She pushes her lush vocal through this song with a gentle heft, a wedge of something good moved at a pace for it to be beheld. She vocally dances so well with that accented guitar that it is easy to picture two dancers accommodating each other on a dance floor. It’s an alluring sound because it is so interconnected and well executed.
“The Straight & Narrow,” with its whispered suggestion of possible partnership, finds Madigan building with solid song architecture something epic in musical scope and emotive substance. One can feel the crossroads a woman finds herself in as Madigan and her support players build up musical tension toward an uncertain emotional resolution. Brilliant.
With its nimble crawling groove “The Down Low” unravels a tale of forbidden love, each measure feeling like a sly dance, a movement toward one’s forbidden partner, sexy, beckoning. Madigan’s purrng vocal, something subtle she places in her voice as it travels seductively over James Heazlewood Dale’s plucky upright bass and Marco Giovino’s hypnotic percussion patterns.
Madigan’s voice is especially strong in the sparsely accompanied “I Shouldn’t Love You.” Her lovely vocal line contrasts fantastically with an accented acoustic guitar as she pleads for a forbidden love to accept their situation. Her voice is particularly fetching when she reaches deep into the emotive pocket of specific lyrics, slowing her sustains to offer more feeling.
“Quicksand & Cocaine” travels to a slowly smoldering electric lead guitar line played by Andy Santospago. As the passion evolves from that burning six string, Madigan takes her time revealing her desire for the subject of her song. A man who keeps her coming back is not good for her on another level. This mix of desperate attraction and possible self-destruction develops well, the darkness hinted at by a darker timbre in her voice and the halting motions of her support players.
An intricate Santospago guitar line and a subtle Madigan glockenspiel perfectly augment Madigan’s hopeful quest for the right partner in “Drowning In You,” a breezy 1920s jazz vibe tune. Madigan’s sweetly quiet delivery fits right in between the two primary instruments. She creates with this one a perfect soundtrack song to a flirty, lazy day at the beach scene.
Using hints of Spanish guitar style, “Dahlia Ave” ambles along like a hazy summer afternoon. Its never resolving melody makes the listener feel how someone may feel in a rut, overwhelmed with thoughts of a lost love she still loves. Heavy thumps from the upright beneath the guitar ring out with the sense of overwhelming heaviness. While this is a sad song, the way it is developed and served up the listener makes it a potent listen.
A quiet song with sparse accompaniment, “Love You Right” lets Madigan showcase the full beauty of her voice. An acoustic guitar, played by Madigan, drips with tender appeal as it lets loose its simple notes in down tempo expression. Meanwhile, Madigan fills in most of the space with a voice large, haunted, haunting, and beautiful.
A quiet, sentimental piano song, “Summer Lament” puts Madigan’s beautiful yet dejected voice over an in-dissolving chord progression, keeping the song and the listener in a melancholy frame. It’s a perfect vehicle for Madigan to convey her emotions over a man she had either a summer romance with or maybe summertime was at the finale of their relationship.
Close out track “Cheryl’s Song” focuses on Madigan’s relationship with her mother. Her quiet voice is loud with emotion. With her sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment, Madigan fills this piece with still waters, something that runs so deep that it doesn’t need to make noise to make its powerful point, Madigan’s voice coming across like a combination of vocal purity and emotive clarity.
Madigan makes numerous points about relationships on this Romeo & Juliet In The City album. She also makes her points with bold musical statements, making song choices that boldly reflect the vision of where each song is taking us. Produced by Madigan and Sam Margolis at Riverview Sound, voices, acoustics, and electric notes ring out with clarity and good tone.
