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Contemporary traditional

Keep Your Silver Shined
Keep Your Silver Shined
By Devon Sproule

City Salvage Records: 2007

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This review first appeared in Turbula in May 2007.

It's not exactly traditional folk, yet not entirely contemporary either. Rather, the music found on the new (fourth) CD from Devon Sproule is a sort of traditional folk for contemporary ears.

Sproule, who is 25 years old, wrote eight of the 10 songs here, and captures the spirit of traditional music on her compositions through her arrangements: Having clarinet, banjo and accordion on various songs gives the album an old-timey feel to it.

But it's those eight songs she wrote that the instrumentation work, that offer her angelic voice the material it needs to shine. Sproule has a wondrous ability to create melodies of pure and radiant beauty, tunes that will stick in your head long after the CD has stopped spinning.