In "Across the Great Divide", her newest release, Allie Jean has brought her most touching work to date to life in a lesson on how powerful folk music can truly be and why she's someone to look out for in the singer-songwriter industry. Rena is known for her extensive instrumental work, and she not only sings, she paints trapestries of sound by weaving guitars, clawhammer banjo, harmonica, piano, and anything she can get her hands on, and occasionally the old-time fiddle or the ukulele.
You are transported through a world that is at once small and expansive, as if the music is making a map of the divide that the song implies. Allie Jean's voice, her first love, occupies the foreground, soft and commanding, coming on with all the wistfulness and regret of someone looking back at a life that is not yet over. The production is intelligent, with instruments serving the story, forging organic warmth that compares to the soul of traditional folk while resounding with a modern freshness.
In a musical landscape often drowned in shiny pop productions, Allie Jean's folky approach is a breath of fresh air and a testament to the rawness that occurs when an artist fully immerses themselves in the process of their art. "Across the Great Divide" is an offer to travel across emotional and musical terrains, guided by a wonderful storyteller.
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