A array of sepia-tinged life truths find a glimmering voice on award-winning songwriter Dulcie Taylor’s latest release, Mirrors and Windows, a warm, intimate album of contemporary roots music infused with soulful Appalachian spirit. Steeped in the fertile soil of country-folk and honeyed harmonies, Taylor brings to her music a Southern vocal lilt, tender lyrical insights, and a knack for pristine melodies.
Originally from South Carolina and now based in the greater Washington, DC area, Taylor often dresses her lyrical themes in the trappings of small-town Southern life, yet strikes universal chords: the challenging ebb-and-flow of love; the unspoken tension between hopes and reality; pain and the struggle for release. With an air of sweetness, Taylor casts a soft but revealing light on the conflicts of the heart with a poignant grace that is at once delicate and resilient.
“Maybe the truth lies somewhere between the things that we want and the things that we need,” she ponders in the beautiful, Stax-inspired “Maybe”, weighing the merits of a relationship, before reflecting again later, “Maybe the truth lies somewhere between figuring it out and just letting it be.” Taylor has a knack for distilling a feeling into nearly naked form, exposing it like a once-buried gem carefully dusted off and held up to the light.
Every track on Mirrors and Windows features dynamite musicianship, thanks to a stellar cast that includes her longtime guitarist and co-producer, Jon Landau, guitarist Duke Levine (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jonatha Brooke), and bassist Richard Gates (Patty Larkin, Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega). Landau and Levine never fail to inject delicious tones to vividly evoke a mood, most of the time adding shades of rootsy twang, slide, and pedal steel, and even a Byrds-y 12-string jangle that permeates the supple country-rock opener, “Blackberry Winter”.
The song cycle follows soft curves across the Americana landscape, from “Seaboard Train”, a Gospel-blues reverie powered by slinky roadhouse slide, to the country melancholy of “Ice Melts”; from the spare, haunting ambiance of “Woman I Used to Be” to the acid-tongued honky-tonk send-off, “Pillow Like a Stone”. In the rock ‘n’ roll-flavored “Miracle”, Taylor sings of small-towners who buoy their drooped hopes at the local bar every Friday night:
“We laugh and drink and in our eyes/ We show the cost of compromise.” Dulcimer and accordion close it out on a redemptive note with the heartwarming old-timey folk tune, “Love Like Yours & Mine”. Every step of the way, Mirrors and Windows glows with moments that reflect both inward and outward, and Taylor is there to illuminate the truths that linger in-between.
— Jim Kirlin
A array of sepia-tinged life truths find a glimmering voice on award-winning songwriter Dulcie Taylor’s latest release, Mirrors and Windows, a warm, intimate album of contemporary roots music infused with soulful Appalachian spirit. Steeped in the fertile soil of country-folk and honeyed harmonies, Taylor brings to her music a Southern vocal lilt, tender lyrical insights, and a knack for pristine melodies.