I’m a Dreamer

Prolific American singer-songwriter Josephine Foster has an eclectic back catalogue with projects including reinterpretations of 19th-century German art song, musical settings of Emily Dickinson’s poems and explorations of flamenco and Spanish folklore. The constant in her music is her distinctive singing – operatic, quavering and ethereal – and the otherworldly flavour of her songs. Following Blood Rushing (2012), Foster’s new record again finds her still walking her home soil, drawing on American folk styles, chiefly country and blues, to populate her finely wrought songs. Featuring honky-tonk style piano, steel guitar, harmonica and upright bass, Foster and her band bring a frontier saloon-bar quality to I’m a Dreamer, though there is not a rough hewn note on this short album.

The tone is dreamy, occasionally sombre, and is all the better for it. Ballads such as ‘No One’s Calling Your Name’ and the title-track are heartbreakingly gentle but also carry hints of darkness. With a cinematic piano part and shimmering cello, ‘Amuse a Muse’ packs drama and storytelling into just two character-filled minutes. Some of the later tracks register fewer surprises but the album ends on a high with its single cover, a version of ‘Cabin in the Sky’, from the musical of the same name, to rival Ella Fitzgerald’s for atmosphere.