"How blissful, on a grey January day, to slip a crisp new disc into the stereo and find the silver lining to all these gloomy clouds." For the Telegraph (UK)'s Helen Brown, that silver lining is k.d. lang's latest Nonesuch release, Watershed. Brown calls this "beautiful album" "a stunning achievement." She writes:
[k.d.'s] elegant, intelligent voice shines like shafts of sunlight through clear, bright skies of melody and twinkling, shifting rhythms. It's better even than her biggest selling, 1992 album, Ingénue.
Often considered the finest torch singer of her generation, ... she has found the lightness of touch she needed: organs, banjos and cymbals dance over deep rivers of enduring emotion.
To read the full review, visit telegraph.co.uk.
The print edition of the magazine also includes a glimpse of k.d.'s pre-Ingénue days with a "flashback" photo of the singer and actor River Phoenix at a PETA event in 1989, recalling her earliest days in Los Angeles.
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Also from the UK, the Times has weighed in on the new album with a four-star review, crediting k.d. with "one of the sexiest, most sensual voices in all of pop music" and calling Watershed "a seductive restatement of her talents." Critic John Bungey writes:
Her clear, pure tones, unadorned with vibrato, melodrama, and other Mariah Carey-isms, have floated through country, pop and swoonsome balladry ... But this is not mid-life crisis territory. The overall mood reflects a hard-won contentment ... Stylistically, every era of Lang's career ... informs Watershed, a set that marks the return of a singular talent to the top of her game.
To read the full review, visit entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.
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The Independent gives the album four stars, with reviewer Andy Gill citing "a sophistication of outlook" in its songs and a delivery from k.d. that "is achingly perfect, her haunted croon somehow at once evoking desire and despair." Having waited eight years since k.d.'s last album of new, original material, Gill writes that Watershed was "well worth the wait."
The Independent also has an interesting feature exploring k.d.'s longtime collaborative relationship with Jeri Heiden, the art director behind the singer's instantly recognizable album art. Heiden, who has worked with a broad range of artists, from Madonna to John Adams (El Niño, Harmonium), first bonded with k.d. over grilled cucumber sandwiches during a rather surreal trip to Graceland more than two decades ago; the pair have developed a strong friendship and a highly successful working relationship (which also included k.d.'s Nonesuch debut, Hymns of the 49th Parallel) ever since.
To read the Independent review, click here; to read the interview with k.d. and Jeri, click here.
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Finally, the Sun, in its review of Watershed, gives the new album 4.5 stars, saying "the quality of k.d.’s work remains as high as ever" and describing the album as having a "lush and lovely feel" from the start:
The first track, "I Dream of Spring," has a vocal to die for, and sets the standard for an album that hardly falters. It's up there with the best work of a genuine class act.
To read the review, visit thesun.co.uk.
