Maybel

The second album from Montreal’s Maybel arrives just in time for the auburn glow of autumn and a turn towards colder air. As the first few singles slipped out in the summer months, they glowed in gorgeous hues, but felt at odds with humidity and heat. This is an album of cable knit harmonies and woolen-wrapped production. The band lights into the indie folk canon with a country heart, aptly citing Emmylou Harris and Daniel Lanois as inspirations for the record. Their debut was sparse, and they continue to corral calm ambience as if it were a studio setting, but this time around there’s a bit of a thickening to their sound. Recorded again with Jonas Bonnetta at Port William Sound, the record lays atop a soft bedding of hiss, letting the vocal harmonies float like breath on November air. A new reliance on soft synths, occasional chugging rhythms, and a faint clockwork whir makes the Lanois connection clear without ever losing what made their debut such an instant favorite.

What makes Maybel so endearing is a sense of intimacy. Like their last, this record is tea steeped in a sense of home comforts. The soft ramble of strings and tangle of voices wouldn’t feel out of place stitched to tape among likeminded menders like Mapache, Fleet Foxes, or Mountain Man. The latter comes to mind more than once among the moments of firelight melancholy on Gloam. Maybel saunters into the same sort of Appalachian-adjacent sense of communal comfort as that outfit, harmonies that twist into the woodsmoke with a distinct feeling of kinship. The candlelight flicker of hope and home within the album counters themes of missing loved ones. There’s a yearning for closeness, and ultimately Gloam becomes an excellent companion for the ache and the arrival.

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