The New CD
1. Resilience
2. Seven Years
3. Runaway Lane
4. Wait For It
5. Piece of You
6. Racing with the Sun
7. The Sioux
8. Driving Away
9. I Left My Brain
10. Firewalker
11. Line of Ascent
12. Nashville
Listen/Buy @ CD Baby
Download MP3's @ Itunes
Song Descriptions
1. Resilience- Mandolin driven, soaring vocals, acoustic indie pop. The blood, guts and joy of coming into love again.
2. Seven Years: A country folk song, sweet and sad, on love and moving on.
3. Runaway Lane: An acoustic pop/rock ode to the danger and deliciousness of falling into the heat of romance.
4.Wait For It: An upbeat party tune, hot, sweet and fun. Bluegrass meets Bhangra in the barn and rocks out on the mandolin.
5. Piece of you: Whispery romantic dream/pop. The story of a beautiful date, a ballad of aching desire and impermanence. Features Julie Wolf on Organ.
6. Racing With the Sun by Ella Jenkins: Chvostek grooves on the edge of gypsy swing. This classic song was first released in 1957 as mass awareness of civil rights took hold.
7. The Sioux: A trad-influenced fiddle-driven piece describing a country train ride to Northern Ontario, confronting the legacy of colonial occupation. Features Bruce Molsky double fiddling with Annabelle.
8. Driving Away: Written and performed by Annabelle and Bruce Cockburn, examines the strangeness of human nature, animal instinct, the mad world and the bitter end of love.
9. I Left My Brain: Irreverent gospel grunge with wild vocal abandon. Heartache in a time of oil wars. Redemption and release for ghosts and survivors.
10. Firewalker : Moody indie-electro dream ballad, states of war, civil unity and uprising, external/internal motion towards the end of fear.
11.Line of Ascent: Instrumental composed on mandolin, created for the dance piece Line of Descent by Aviva Geismar – “explores how the unconscious legacy of trauma pervades relationships – to others, to the world, to oneself.”
12.Nashville: A country song encapsulating a visit to Music City, discovering amidst the glitz and hustle a moment of calm clarity. Features Mary Gauthier on Vocals.
Review: Chvostek Sensational Solo
The Wailin' Jennys' loss is the world's gain. Annabelle Chvostek, who replaced Cara Luft in that fabulous roots-folk trio, has struck out on her own and created a sensational solo album.
Chvostek is a ridiculously talented musician from Montreal by way of Toronto who plays guitar, mandolin, violin, organ, accordion and who knows what else. Vocally, she's up to any task, from pop highs to gritty blues lows.
On Resilience, Chvostek's original compositions are full of aching desire dressed in poetry and rendered with a musical imagination that seems to know no bounds. Her balalaika-like mandolin gives an exotic flavour to the heart-on-sleeve love song Piece of You, which has a melody that you simply melt into. More edgy is a thing called I Left My Brain that you assume is an ancient field holler or a cover of an obscure blues-gospel number that Chvostek discovered on a flea-market 78. Not so, it's original. It's awe-inspiring that the same mind can conceive both this song and its polar opposite, the irresistible, bright and sunny mandolin-strummer Wait for It. The Sioux, meanwhile, is an easy to listen to but incredibly sophisticated old time fiddle song with a geopolitical theme.
Even solo albums are group efforts, of course, and Chvostek had help here from a couple of folk legends. She co-wrote the duet Driving Away with Bruce Cockburn while Mary Gautier and Michael Jerome Brown are musical guests. Grammy-nominated Canadian Roma Baron and Vivian Stoll produced the album, which was recorded in New York and Montreal. There are at least a dozen musicians contributing to the project, making the achievement of the producers in directing all that talent even more impressive.
Resilience ends with a catchy, languid, twangy country tune called Nashville which asks "what would you do for the love inside a song?'' The answer is this album.
- Cam Fuller, The StarPhoenix, April 24, 2008