GRAPHIC AS A STAR PRESS

TERRASCOPE: Taking as her starting point, the poetry of Emily Dickenson, this album is a gentle and wistful affair, the distinct and gorgeous voice of Josephine Foster bringing great poignancy and grace to the words. With twenty Six tracks to browse through, there is plenty to enjoy, the sparse acoustic guitar backings and occasional mouth harp interludes giving this an old time Americana feel, something that suits the project perfectly.

Throughout the album there is a dusty beauty, no more so than on “They Called Me to the Window” a piece where music and poetry complement each other as if written as a single piece, as soft as a falling petal. Elsewhere, “In Falling Timbers” sounds like a hymn, whilst “My Life Has Stood-a Loaded Gun” is truly haunting, a wondrous track that uses all of its five minutes to wrap itself around your soul.

One of the strengths of this album is the way it barely changes in tempo or mood, the songs drifting into one another as you sail on a sea of words and notes calm and utterly at peace. By the time you reach “Whoever Disenchants”, the world has become a simpler place, less crowded and much slower in its pace of life. There is magic in this album and it is a joy to fall under its spell.

OTHER MUSIC: Chanteuse Josephine Foster has always been a talented chameleon, bounding from one sound and style to the next, confidently tackling blistering psych rock, German lieder, and pure acid folk in her own inimitable style. Graphic as a Star, her latest and first for the Fire label, is every bit as high concept as her other works, yet it finds her taking an almost simplistic approach, matching twenty-six Emily Dickinson poems to exceedingly spare and oft-gorgeous arrangements.

Foster displays a unique mastery with this record, subtly complementing the variety of moods Dickinson channeled so that a track like “She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms” sounds as slyly playful in musical form, accompanied by strums and the occasional burst of harmonica, as the poet’s original piece about a sunset did. “In Falling Timbers Buried” is even better, imbued with a graceful power that shifts the songs tone from pleasantly conversational to quietly mourning within a matter of seconds.

Foster’s voice has a unique and forceful presence all its own throughout the album, and yet when left unaccompanied on Graphic as a Star, it beautifully complements nonpareil originality of Dickinson’s meters, playful rhymes, and inspired phrasing. Often extremely brief, tracks like “Exultation Is the Going” and “Beauty Crowds Me Till I Die” add nothing but faint birdsong in the background to the voice, each a cappella rendition a spotlight on Foster’s keen understanding of Dickinson’s words. An extremely pleasant surprise, Foster’s latest continues to see her develop as an artist, while performing the not-so-simple task of successfully adapting the work of a poet who hardly needs embellishment. -MC

THE BOSTON GLOBE: Josephine Foster is an artsy siren who sings like a time-displaced lady of the lake, poses as a Joan of Arc on her CD’s inner sleeve, emulates the sound of a theremin, and breaks rules like the Chicago opera school dropout she claims to be. To virgin ears, the outsider folkie’s music can sound like oddball remakes of classic minstrel melodies — until the listener realizes that the songs are Foster’s own memorable creations. And though her vocalizing — dramatic, swooping warbles akin to a Tiny Tim meeting with Jefferson Airplane-era Grace Slick — often screams “acquired taste,” it connects with an emotive beauty. Recalling her work with the Supposed, periodic drums and reverb-drenched guitar float psych-rock vapors around Foster and add nicely to the demented chaos of “Lullaby to All.” But as her gentle harp and vocal at the start of “Waltz of Green” or her chirrups on the finger-picked “A Thimbleful of Milk” convey, Foster is most magic when left to her own devices. -Tristram Lozaw

TINY MIX TAPES: It might be a wonderful coincidence that the opening track of her newest album is named “Garden of Earthly Delights.” Determining which incidence of the phrase is being referenced may be fruitless. One could look to the triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, the fantastic splendor of which evokes the same rare and medieval quality that is embodied in Josephine Foster’s voice. Or maybe you might know of the seemingly rare and wonderful double LP compilation entitled Garden of Earthly Delights, which was released almost four decades ago and featured an amazing assortment of the ’60s’ most vivid and remarkable gems. The phrase evokes the exact density and lusciousness that is flowing and growing from Jo Foster’s newest album.

Accompaniment by drums and an often atonal guitar make this album seem more from the realm of jazz than her two previous solo works. The songs often caterwaul into spheres of transcendental interpretation, belying any listener’s attempts to rationally follow the singer’s intent. It’s not art for art’s sake, but it seems to be an apropos vehicle for music that lacks pretension while exhibiting an awareness of its own genuine worth. Foster routinely accomplishes the amazing feat of making challenging and quasi-inaccessible music charming and beautiful.

The picture of Foster in the insert, standing regally, clad in red corduroys, and wearing a knightly breastplate (complete with overstated pectoral muscles and gold accent), shows that either she’s got a wild sense of humor or she is totally out there, somewhere, in a bizarre world of medieval anti-fashion. The painting on the cover, done by Foster, has a dose of whimsy and evokes madness in such a fashion that studying the cover art itself might serve as a preface for the soprano’s creepy aural tremor.

In “All I Wanted Was the Moon,” Foster sings “All I wanted was the moon/ But I left the earth too soon/ In a ship that had no room/ For my love to come, my groom.” Perhaps she feels alone in her journey, as if no one is willing to accompany her on a mad jaunt around the solar system. For those willing to say yes, onward is the word of the day. Foster leads us into a sparsely populated world of operatic voices rebelling against genre norms that are inventing unprecedented venues of musical exploration. Here is an artist who is clearly able to mix an extraordinary range of talent with a penchant for experimentation in a manner that resists easy comparison. This singularity instantly vaults her work’s status from beyond membership in some ill-conceived/non-existent musical movement. That’s a piece of bread worth toasting.- Chizzly St. Claw

TIME OUT NEW YORK: If you’re interested in 19th-century vocal music but cringe at the legions of shrieking conservatory-trained singers shattering wineglasses with waves of vibrato, Chicagoan Josephine Foster may be the answer to a prayer. Foster has established herself as an eccentrically mesmerizing singer-guitarist and composer of songs that seem sprung from the forehead of some forgotten Appalachian demigod, and her ventures into rock (with her band the Supposed) are equally impressive.

Foster’s latest release, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, takes on seven staples of the 19th-century German art-song tradition known as lieder, a bold step even by her unpredictable standards. The names of the composers (Schumann, Schubert, Brahms and Hugo Wolf) will be familiar to followers of classical music; the names of the poets, with the exception of Goethe, less so. Foster’s hushed, idiosyncratic interpretations remind us that originally, this was chamber music in the most literal sense, designed to be heard at an intimate social gathering around the ubiquitous living-room piano. The lyrics are in German, but seeking out translations might be worth the effort, if only to steep oneself in the general milieu of dark forests, doomed loves and crumbling Rhine castles; Foster’s clear soprano and nylon-string guitar accompaniments set a corresponding emotional tone. The album’s recorded arrangements include quite a bit of intriguingly disorienting electric guitar and background vocals; while Foster will play solo on acoustic guitar, her live show promises to be no less absorbing.—Bob Bannister

PRESSPITCHFORK: Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You is not a collection of whipper-snapped nature-isms with the occasional diminished chord hacking shit up. No, this record actually taps into some palpable loneliness– a hopeless, almost Orphic worldview where song’s both the symptom and the cure. Foster’s a spine-tingler who baits with images of the familiar inevitable, her voice a nightmare we want to have. She won’t tell us things are gonna be better, and she won’t give us counsel to make things so ourselves– “There are reasons for our trials/ They are not our own”. But whatever back-alley grove she’s working, she’s playing these songs all the time, and off-track visitors don’t bother her. -Nick Sylvester

DROWNED IN SOUND: Foster’s voice transcends sentimentality and embraces a spirit of rugged pilgrimage that is the backbone of this stunningly austere acoustic album. It’s difficult knowing where to start on an album of such striking variety. Foster’s voice is a spellbinding antique that goes hand in hand with her lyrical enchantment to overcome a need for conventional melody and pave a rare path where the avant-garde is displayed rich and listenable. Opening track ‘The Siren’s Admonition’ sails out on the edge of an off-key harp to deliver a strangely moving message of mystic devotion, and the tinge of eerie sea-shanty from abandoned ship is a constant recurrence. Foster’s rich lyricism and imagery takes us to the most visually creative depths of folk music, exposing the character of her songs to light like the finest of painters. Following the filmic hymn to sensitive grace of the title-track, the songs take on the successful feel of classic folk adapted into a new form of dark beauty on another planet, past or future. Achieved in Hazel Eyes is a depth of seriously strange beauty, a glint in Foster’s voice throughout sufficient to say she knows it. In possibly the most outlandish of alternative genres, Hazel Eyes puts her on top of the weirdo tree with such original luminaries as Michael Hurley and Vashti Bunyan. ‘Hominy Grits’, all ukulele and laid-back rhythm, is a whim that ends the album on a suitably surreal strain, the final picture in a high-art fairytale of dark wonder. –Neil Jones

SPLENDID: Hazel Eyes is an acoustic wonderland and Foster is the mad hatter. As a singer, Foster mixes the vocal timbre of Joan Baez with the oddball mannerisms of Karen Dalton to create a completely authentic, if not otherworldly, musical persona. From “Siren Song”’s incomprehensible murmur to “Trees Lay By”’s beautiful balladry, the album can be as unapproachable as it is welcoming… Ultimately, Hazel Eyes is a well of uncompromising material in the truest sense of the repressed artistic vision.—Lisa Green

VOLCANIC TONGUE: Hard to think of any other contemporary artists that share the same kind of vision of maverick American folk forms so completely as Josephine Foster and The Cherry Blossoms, so this collaboration with Nashville’s premier psychedelic jug band should come as an absolute dream hook-up for fans of primitively rendered joy shapes. Parts of this sound like rehearsal tapes from the EPI Velvet Underground blats, with Lou Reed running the group through folk-punkers like “It’s Alright, The Way That You Live” and “Temptation Inside Your Heart” while Kenneth Anger attempts to inaugurate the first meeting of the Fugs chorus girls in a massed choir version of Shaker hymnals. Others – particularly the ones led by Josephine’s timelessly beautiful vocals – sound like the kind of fantasy acid/folk cult sides that might’ve come out of a particularly culturally removed commune circa 1968 USA. The Cherry Blossoms choir inevitably takes everything off into whole new zones of liberated vocalese and free-form freakout while that same black streak that deformed their debut LP on Black Velvet Fuckere makes other, darker corners of the session sound more like the Jandek big-band plays early American hypnotics in the style of The Godz. I can’t think of anyone with a deeper connection to the most mysterious and intuitive springs of modern avant-brut sound than these guys and this is a near perfect rendering of the sound you’ve long felt echoing around the loneliest zones of your brain. This limited edition CD-R is privately released by the group themselves and comes with full-colour card sleeves. Highly recommended. –David Keenan

BOOMKAT: Despite Georgie Bush knocking seven bells out of his foreign policy through armed conflicts in the sand, there’s been a shockingly low amount of protest from the musical world – with the likes of the Beastie Boys, Dixie Chicks and Green Day flying the battered flag. But wait…what’s this? A compilation of anti-war songs featuring Devendra, Diane Cluck, the Feathers and Angels of Light? Curated by the wonderful Josephine Foster? At last the tender leftfield has a voice… Far less lumpen than such releases tend to be, the less aggressive stance displayed by the respective artists is also manifest in the non-preaching liner notes – with Foster stating “all of the musicians represented here are us citizens; our voices join with many others across this land that freely question and openly oppose war – all proceeds from sales of this compilation are being donated to specific counter-recruitment and pacifist organizations and we hope to assist them in their efforts promoting peace and non-militarism in the united states”. So with the mission statements out of the way, does the music withstand its lofty pronouncements? Well yes – with a choice of tracks that could happily make up a scene compilation without any sniff of anti-war sentiment propping it all up. Kicking off with The Cherry Blossoms and ‘Dragonfly’, ‘So Much Fire To Roast Human Flesh’ trickles into your subconscious with a thrumming song that sounds as if you’re overhearing an intimate broadcast in a rain lashed forest – a proposition that is infinitely more welcoming than that description suggests. Next up is the Banhart-affiliated Feathers, bringing a frazzled perspective to the psych palate – reimagining Americana as an echoing landscape of swirling guitars and rhythmical crescendos, before Meg Baird serves up a tender confection of folk that happily gives the nod to Vashti et al. Choosing to abandon the enthusiasm etched sound of ‘White Reggae Troll’, Devendra delivers a genuinely moving contribution in the shape of ‘I Know Some Souls (Demo)’ – exposing a a raw surface of emotion that has an impact well beyond its means, a situation that is reprised by Diane Cluck for the wonderful ‘A Phoenix And Doves’. Elsewhere, Josephine Foster delivers a heartfelt musical plea with ‘Would You Pave The Road’, Pajo go for grand gestures with the acoustic epic ‘War Is Dead’, whilst the tremulous country of Kath Bloom has an oddly patriotic feel. Whether you support their motives or not, you can’t question the musical muscle on show. Fight! http://store.arthurmag.com/product/josephine-foster-so-much-fire-to-roast-human-flesh

MOJO: Spooky backwoods rock’n’roll from an operatically trained singer. As half of the duo Born Heller, Josephine Foster stitched together operatic vocals with the stark, plaintive music of the Appalachian hills-Dock Boggs on a date with a less confrontational Diamanda Galas. This album, in a traditional group format, is no less disquieting. This is inward looking stuff, reminiscent of West Coast psychaedelia, if Fly Agaric mushrooms had been the drug of choice. Patti Smith is a very loose starting point but Foster also appears to channel Galas, KUKL period Bjork and hippy folk visionary Tom Rapp. The opener, Well-Heeled Men, could well be Shirley Collins picnicking with the Manson family. Imbued with a genuine frisson of the rich and strange, this is a rare gothic (as opposed to ‘goth’) treat. –Pete Redmond

PITCHFORK: At its start, All The Leaves Are Gone heeds Lady Macbeth’s advice and looks like the flower. For the first few minutes of album opener “Well-Heeled Man”, Josephine Foster lips pretty whatnots over sparse guitar action, echoing both her work with Jason Ajemian as Born Heller and “Little Life”, her stand out contribution to Devendra Banhart’s recent neo-folk compilation Golden Apples of the Sun. And then the serpent rears its head: Drums roll, cymbals crash, acoustic guitars fight an electric improvisational warrior– from pretty much herein, All the Leaves Are Gone is a bloodthirsty rock album, hot and curdling till the last man bites the Martian grass. -Nick Sylvester

STOMP AND STAMMER: Born Heller play a kind of chamber-folk that at times brings to mind the golden era of British folk music. The most striking thing about Born Heller is easily Foster’s vocals — she is trained in opera but able to transform what she has learned into a singing style that is breathtakingly emotional, intimate, and vulnerable, while retaining the virtuosity of her training.

Then there are the arrangements, and the contributions of Ajemian. Everything about this already-strong music is made stronger through his work, and the music is as stimulating as it is moving (nearly, anyway – it’s pretty darn moving). He’ll lay out of a song for a minute and suddenly come in bowing his bass with dissonant chords that perfectly underlie the feeling of Foster’s music. He’ll play the strings with mallets, bow a lead during an instrumental passage, even percussively strike the body of the bass — whatever is necessary. And it all works. It also brings extraordinary dynamics to what is otherwise fairly small music. When Foster’s gentle guitar playing and singing is suddenly joined by the bowed bass, the effect is cinematic. “No More Lamps in the Morning” is the most captivating example of this — the song starts out pretty enough, and just builds and builds in emotional intensity, accented by the comings and goings of Ajemian’s accompaniment. Rarely do sophistication and intellectualism co-exist with simplicity and emotional-directness, but Born Heller’s music make it sound like these concepts were made for each other. – Dugan Trodglen