Soul Music

Claire Small is a soul singer. Not in the traditional black gospel-influenced sense (though that’s certainly one of her touchstones), but in a way that draws on sources just as old. On the surface, Small’s latest album, Ledger, is confessional singer-songwriter fare. But the record’s range of influences hints at the depth of her imagery, which calls on Hebrew Scripture as much as it does P.J. Harvey and Mindy Smith. “Numbers” is one such song. Over a groove anchored by upright bass and Middle Eastern percussion, Small chants, “Three shovels of dirt on my back / I cry out / The sun is so hot and the earth is so black / I cry out.” She then repeats the lines “Watch your step” and “This little Lamb of God has lost her way.” The reference evokes the man in the 15th chapter of Numbers who is stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, the implication being that Small, too, fears she may be punished for deviating from a life of routine faith. Elsewhere, scriptural imagery abounds. In “Citronella,” ostensibly a love song, she sings, “The world is so different now the prisoners are free / I let them go into the mighty sea.” In “My Way On,” she is “walking without shoes,” a reference that, in Hebrew and Muslim literature, is a symbol of servitude and, alternately, shame. Ledger was recorded by the eclectic producer and guitarist Joe McMahan. Its sparse, linear arrangements recall his previous work with singer-songwriters Kevin Gordon and Jennifer Niceley, but if anything, Small’s musical influences are more diverse than those two. Tactfully avoiding shuffles and hard backbeats, she and her backing band, which includes bassist Kyle Kegerreis and drummer Sam Baker, opt for exotic half-time grooves and gentle sambas that complement Small’s wavering, searching alto. Throughout Ledger, Small seems concerned about the state of her soul. Like the work of Mindy Smith, a songwriter also known for scriptural, albeit Christian, symbolism, Small’s issues of the heart are bound to issues of faith. As such, Ledger is no mere relationship record. For Small, the physical embrace equates with the seeker’s hunger for understanding. Like the search for Woman Wisdom in the Proverbs, Small, too, longs to hold something “more precious than jewels.”