On her third album, From Newman Street, Kassi Valazza uses humble landscapes to ground existential musings on the passage of time and navigating change. The album opener “Better Highways,” a tasteful slice of Americana embellished with pedal steel flourishes, she employs a Mary Oliver-esque evocation of nature – observing winter geese, willows, cherry blossoms, and snowfall – and finds perspective and tranquility in their presence. “Some bright day / The right ones will find you…,” she sings, making peace with waiting. Despite the song’s breezy sound, there’s a backdrop of tragedy, “...Some may not stay / But death will remind you.” By the song’s end, Valazza emerges with something of a battle cry: “I was born to see things my way,” a fitting mission statement for a songwriter content to take things at her own pace and follow her own path.
The default soundscape of From Newman Street is tasteful, understated folk that primarily evokes Joni Mitchell (a comparison that’s also aided by the striking similarities between the two women's voices) as well as modern contemporaries Erin Rae and Brandi Carlile. Gently finger-picked guitar, light drumming, and mellotron passages make for an endlessly pleasant listening experience – one that contrasts sharply with the starkness that often underpins Valazza’s words. Case in point: “Shadow of Lately,” which sounds endlessly lovely even as it meditates on anger, regret, and painful old memories. Conversely, on a song like “Your Heart’s a Tin Box,” there’s a charming synergy between the lilting sound and Valazza’s poetry: “May your heart become a tin box / Where your cigarettes are stored / You can hand them out to passerbys / And greet them at your door / Like an angel with an eye for wounded souls.”
