***Bright Day, EMILY RODGERS’ first proper album (following a self-released EP), is a gorgeous and intense record. If traditional folk music itself recalls rustic woodland scenes tickled with sunlight, then Bright Day is the snow that sits upon the cabin’s roof and weighs down the branches. Rodgers breathes a beautiful desolation into her songs. Delicate guitars, sparse piano and languid lap steel are joined by the occasional brushed drum drift foreward, but it’s Emily Rodgers’ voice that covers every inch of the record, echoing through even the empty spaces. Rodgers seems less akin to the psychedelic pastoral folk of late (perhaps best represented by Joanna Newsom) and even further away from the late 1990’s coffeehouse/Lilith Fair crowd, but perhaps closer to the bleak, introspective beauty found in the output of the 4AD label in the 1980’s, a place where exquisite voices floated ethereally over pretty yet cryptic lyrics at a somber tempo. Rodgers’ voice recalls Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and perhaps Tim Buckley at his most serene. (STREET DATE - 10/06/2009)