Sounding like the gorgeous-voiced kid sister of Neko Case,
Shelley Short treats folk music with a mere fleeting interest,
liberally picking and choosing from the storied genre with great care
on her third full-length, Water for the Day. The
Portland- via-Chicago-via-Portland-via-Los Angeles-via-Portland (not
necessarily in that order) singer/songwriter is always searching for a
new locale to lay her head. Short’s songs aren’t travel songs as much
as they are relocation ballads. It’s more U-Haul tape deck music than
lonesome boxcar folk songs.
As she explains, “In Chicago I had lots of time to think and write
during the winter months. In Los Angeles I didn’t have much time to
write because I spent so much time on a bus, or in a car.”
Recorded in transit, Water for the Day is a record that
celebrates life’s uncertainties, and the recording process was no
different. “I was moving away from Chicago, so I knew I wouldn’t be
working with the band. It was sad, but I also tried to look at it as a
way for me to try new sounds.” She continues, “I was
thinking about how songs can slow down and speed up in a natural
way, like a heartbeat.”
The expansive opener, “Silver & Gold,” is about as country as
Short will ever get, and while it’s not quite a rhinestone boot-stomper
from Music City, it is a smoky campfire ballad that could extinguish
even the hottest of flames. Meanwhile, “How Grand,” with a muffled bass
drum thump that sounds like it’s coming from another room, is a
delicate little number with the soft lyrical delivery of “Somebody
said, ‘How long you been crying?’/Well I never did, well maybe I did,
but I wasn’t trying/and I’ve never felt a heart like yours darling.”
Short also expands the range of her talents, including the quirky
“Single-Minded Hero,” the haunting “Sting Along”—in which the raw
recording accentuates Short’s lonesome howl—and, of course,
something every album should have—a pro-pony ballad in “4 Legs
& Light.”