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SHARI ULRICH - Everywhere I Go

SHARI ULRICH - Everywhere I Go
Borealis Records BCD228

Shari’s a skilled singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a CV spanning close on 40 years. She started out with the ‘infamous’, whimsical, British-Columbia-based, Pied Pumkin String Ensemble and moved on through a stint with Valdy and his Hometown Band, subsequently embarking on a healthy solo career, during which time she’s amassed an impressive total of 21 album releases (that includes various collaborations). Everywhere I Go turns out to be her eighth purely solo record; her first for Borealis, it’s also a landmark in that it’s engineered and produced by her daughter Julia Graff.

It’s a thoroughly accessible collection of attractive songs (all but one self-penned); these are companionable reflections on life and love couched in appealing melodies and bedecked with well-upholstered yet sensitively managed backdrops that take in guitars, piano, banjo, bass and drums and occasional fiddle, mandolin, trumpet and French horns, and range from country-folk acoustic to soft rock. Maybe some tracks end up a touch too mainstream (It’s Alright, Making Friends With Gone), but it’s on the more restrained arrangements like Free Fall that Shari’s songs score most with their simplicity of expression, positive attitude and universality of content. In a way, I might even describe Shari’s craft as old-fashioned, in a stylistic sense too, in that her music has the air of comfortable familiarity and wouldn’t have sounded out of place at any time over the past four decades. Like her singing voice, it’s sweet and timeless; unchallenging, yes, but comforting and reassuring – and all the better for that. I might add that I just loved the opening (title) track, so much that I was reluctant to proceed past it, in case the rest of the album wasn’t as enchanting! Well, actually it isn’t quite, but neither is it a letdown…

www.shariulrich.com

David Kidman

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This album was reviewed in Issue 102 of The Living Tradition magazine.