Pentimento

The first notes of Pentimento are birdsong, and with it in the distance, Carson McHone reads from an 1840 letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller: “Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.” One of the birds whistles a distinct three-note tune. McHone whistles it back. A piano takes up the line, and the song “Winter Breaking” blooms into being. In the study of physical art, the pentimento is an artefact, a remnant of a previous draft or altogether different painting that’s apparent beneath layers of paint on a finished canvas. Within seconds of Pentimento, one hears how the album organises itself around this idea: “Winter Breaking” is an astonishing piece of songwriting, a meticulously crafted guitar-pop jewel that finds McHone at the peak of her powers as a bandleader and a lyricist. The first 30 seconds contain the pentimenti, the earlier sounds, spaces,