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A delightfully warm collection of folk songs perfect for an overcast winter day, Maria Dunn’s seventh album is outright springy at times, historically pertinent at others — and calmly, sincerely emotional throughout. 

Besides that confident voice, what I’ve always loved about Dunn is her ability to take us to the realest, least fantastical places across time and space, and her look at humanity from both ends of mortality makes this album especially universal, despite its keen focus on a few Edmonton landmarks, both in event and on our skyline.

The album opens with an eye on the future in a sort of Valentine to youth which gives the album its title, Joyful Banner Blazing. It’s likely to make you think fondly of the little people in your life, my niece Tegan and young friend Levon come to mind, innocent pathfinders whose minds explode every day with firsts, exploring our valleys with their invented narratives.

It’s Maria Dunn, so entrenched activism is a given, and on the second song she takes us back to the infamous, 1986 Gainers strike, an early, prominent local example of citizens being disposable in service of profit, rather than the other way around.
“One by one, they try to take us all away but, like pebbles on the beach, we shift and remain,” Dunn sings. “You can grind your heel down into the sand, but your mark disappears when the next wave lands.”

Keeping to the labour theme, Waltzing with the Angels is cheerful tribute to Métis ironworkers who helped raise the CN Tower, Edmonton’s first skyscraper, which opened its doors in 1966. While doing so, Paul Rivard fell to his death, and Shannon Johnson’s fiddle brings in a taste of the bittersweet in this uplifting number.
Next up, Jeremiah McDade arranges piercing horns on the upbeat, radio-friendly Ontario Song, and every folksinger has a incumbent duty to tease us with the freedom we all know we could chase if we just shook off some of the things that don’t matter, as water off a wet dog at the perimeter of a lake.

This is a really great and energetic one; can’t wait to hit that highway again.
Moving along, Love Carries Me is a quasi-religious, humanist hymn you could picture Gelflings singing in little villages, and while it’s clearly from a personal place, it’s basically a tribute to the general idea of love itself without any selfish hysterics wedged in.
Flipping the record — haha, that’s old person talk for “on the second half” — we come to that great Canadian tradition of a hockey song. For Dunn, Secondhand Skates is more about skating, and this one goes nicely with The Hip’s Fireworks and Jane Siberry’s Hockey, though unlike those songs, Dunn doesn’t drop the f-bomb.

With some lovely Burt Bacharach trombone by Audrey Ochoa, Declan’s Song (The Good Life) sits on the pile of positivity already found throughout this easygoing musical picnic. A beautiful number inspired by that crazy joy babies inspire, this has a swell ’60s AM radio vibe and is the boldest song on the album, really.

But it’s Don’t Think You Are Forgotten that’s my favourite track, inspired by a letter from Martha Lockyer to her son Chris fighting in the First World War — he went down Aug. 17, 1917 — and Martha’s letter of remembrance comes true once again as we think of them both. The song, which ends with haunted highland bagpipes by local painting wizard Campbell Wallace, heavy lifts for all the dead to whom we raise a glass, war or no — Dunn completes the album’s thematic circle from playground to the grave, with all those feelings in between.

Dunn then covers a lovely, pedal-steel-buttered version of Ron Hynes’ From Dublin with Love before turning out the lights with the last song, Beautiful Fools, within which she notes, “We are all tempted to stray, by the flask or the flash or the flesh. We are all your wisest adviser; we are all emotional wrecks.” This a cappella, circular harmony with Dawn Cross and Dana Wylie will have you singing along by the second listen, and I love the wider implications of the lyric, “We are all absorbed in the details, like children constructing in sand. Mesmerised by the antics of spiders, intent in our wonderland.” Back to the children playing outdoors, and into adulthood where we foolishly pretend we aren’t still pretending.

Tracks:  
01 Joyful Banner Blazing
02 Heart in Hand
03 Waltzing with the Angels
04 Ontario Song
05 Love Carries Me
06 Secondhand Skates
07 Declan'S Song (The Good Life)
08 Don'T Think You Are Forgotten
09 From Dublin with Love
10 Beautiful Fools

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_vDPkXrB_Q