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Marisa Yeaman's latest release Roadmap Heart is like
a long and winding road that transports listeners through the quaint
vistas of seaside village streets to crossing paths with lazy country
meadows, gently rolling hills, picturesque backwoods, and rustic daydreamy
dales. Self-produced by Yeaman, Roadmap Heart offers songs
with folksy cinders foddered by a grassroots flint. The feathery acoustics
stitching through her songs recall Luka Bloom, and the prophetic
language of her lyrics share a likeness to Lyle Lovett as they
tunnel gracefully through the melodically-combed passages. Each song
is another lesson that Yeaman has learned about life, all of which
can be applied to many others' lives. Similar to the literary writer
Mark Twain, Marisa Yeaman writes about a country lifestyle
as she looks beneath the surface of human nature with the clarity
and perception of a sage.
Like Twain's characters Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, several
songs show the painful repercussions of being led by a naïve
heart, while other songs make us remember that being vulnerable breathes
life into those areas of us that stay guarded and dormant. Her song
"Amsterdam Rain" reveals that the ribbons of love stay wrapped
around one's heart long after a break up, "I walk these cobbled
streets to the sound of my own feet and the ghosts of centuries past
/ Painting pictures in my mind's eye but your memory holds fast /
There dancing in a corner bar to an old gypsy guitar, and there you
come again / I'm drenched in paint and water / Love crosses all borders
in the Amsterdam Rain." The soft country-folk sway of "Perfectly
Flawed" has a bluesy feel in its calm trundle with a Chrissie
Hynde voicing. The Asian strings dipping in and out "Mantra"
broaden Yeaman's breadth of folk, while the smoky roots acoustics
of "Desolate" are heavy in old west's embers making the
ambling tempo like a cowboy's swagger.
There is something nomadic about Yeaman's songs like a soul searching
for solid ground to settle on and willing to take risks into the unknown
to find it. These are songs that embrace one's mood while traveling
on the road or sitting still on the front porch or lounging along
the banks of a lake. Yeaman's songs reflect a country lifestyle that
is real and pulses with a desire for joy. Willowy and rustic, Roadmap
Heart is a picture of life that opens its arms to what lies over
the horizon and is willing to walk as far as the sky extends.
-Susan Frances
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