Written by: Alex Green
“Living in these crazy times, beauty can be hard to find that’s pure,” sings Kimm Rogers on her new record Where The Pavement Grows. A haunting meditation on fleeting beauty and our temporary, shaky place in the world, Where The Pavement Grows is a stunning sonic study of what happens in the extraordinary moments of our ordinary lives.
It’s been a while since Rogers has checked in, but time has done nothing but augment her arresting, heart-stopping delivery. Imbued with authority and grace, her phrasing remains unique and accessible and her delivery nothing short of masterful.
A riveting ten-song collection, Where The Pavement Grows opens with “Rain” a nuanced and percussive number that finds Rogers singing, “You can run from my love/But you know it always catches up to you…” Meanwhile, “Twenty-Three” is a rueful age-defying rave-up that confronts the passing of time (“I’m better than I used to be/Back when I was twenty-three…”); “Gravity” is a rich and wrenching study of the comforting weight of love and “As Good As It Gets” is a gentle folk number about the beauty we almost miss even though it’s staring right at us.
Produced by Julian Coryell (Leonard Cohen, Aimee Mann), Where The Pavement Grows is a textured collection that brings to mind Daniel Lanois’ work on Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball. It’s gentle and sensual and allows Rogers’ voice to float between the layers and glide freely in and out of the compositions.
And what a voice Rogers has—a sterling blend of everyone from Marianne Faithful to Carla Olson, Rogers is one of the few singers around who possesses sheer confidence and a world-weary vulnerability. In fact, it’s this combination that gives her work such quiet authority and wisdom. To borrow Saul Bellow’s phrase, Rogers is an open-wound of a woman and nowhere is this more evident than on the sweeping title track when she declares, “Sometimes it’s hard just to feel profound…”
Later, “The Ballad Of Moon Valley” is a moody, Presocratic shuffle that confronts the differences between reality and appearance and the album-closing “Star Filled Canopy” is a life-affirming stomp that dares us to ignore the vastness of the universe and instead savor the little blasts of life that light up our lives.
The album is out in June and you can order it here:
