Secret Meeting score: 81

by Philip Moss

Much like Meg Duffy aka Hand Habits, who released the massively underrated, placeholder, earlier this year, Heather Woods Broderick has spent much of her career in the shadows of other artists – as a collaborator with the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and Damien Jurado – rather than as an performer in her own right. Ready to step out of the shadows, she retreated to the Oregon coast where she’d spent the summer days of her childhood to conjure up her latest work, Invitation.

Opener, A Stilling Wind, confirms what a beautiful voice Broderick possesses – but its musical palette also displays her fine ear for arrangement as it floats in with fluttering pianos and a looping acoustic guitar. ‘I spent the year, at the edge of the cape, feet swingin’ in the atmosphere- a stilling wind, thick with fear, picked up all the tiny pieces to redeposit them here,’ she sings before it swells with Sigur Rós-evoking seduction, carried by the pattering of light percussion and lugubriously emotive strings.

I Try’s choral beginnings feel borderline anthemic, and give way to a carefully crafted melody that falls somewhere between Aldous Harding and the more cinematic moments of Scott 4. Nightcrawler’s backing vocal parts, and the overall aesthetic of Where I Lay recall Kate Bush, White Tail, which handles themes of depression, is perhaps Invitation’s most fully embellished and best song, while Quicksand’s refrained chorus makes it the most likely crossover moment.

Broderick is currently out on the road with Van Etten touring her latest album, Remind Me Tomorrow, but Invitation proves she is more than ready to confidently and deservedly take centre stage. Invitation is a thing of ethereal beauty.

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