Josephine Foster

The connection between Josephine Foster and her partner, Spanish composer and guitarist Víctor Herrero goes back years into her catalog. Sift through the credits of her works and Herrero’s hand can be heard guiding works as far back as 2008’s The Coming Gladness. The two have also worked together as Mendrugo with Herrero’s brother José. Years of collaboration have given the pair a shorthand, a symbiotic serenade that pushes her celestial vocals on tempered winds. For their latest collaboration Foster pays tribute to her longtime foil, interpreting seven of Herrero’s songs. The setup is simple, just Foster and Victor on a Spanish guitar, but with Foster’s resonant register, she’s never needed the gilt and glint of embellishments. The pair digs into Herrero’s tender songwriting; songs that flow in rivulets of calm, so much so that when birds begin to chirp in “Hermana,” it seems like they were singing the whole record through.

It feels like the kind of record captured ad hoc on the porch or picnic-side in a meadow. Foster sings like no one’s watching, lullabies to the self, serenades to the sky. It’s a sort of peek into the privacy of playing at home, cracking the door on a performance we’re not supposed to see. Though, that’s not to discount the players. The duo at their most sanguine still finds them sailing through the songs with virtuosic skill. With the trees as temple, the sky arched as cathedral, Foster and Herrero harness a kind of natural hymn that transports the listener. Dust it up a few years and this could feel like the kind of deep regional treasure that’s meant for the folk archives. It’s the kind of record that would have left Harry Smith with eyes wide and tape rolling. Thankfully we don’t have to dig it out from the dust, a curio that’s lovingly persevered by the good folks at Eiderdown and Nyahh.

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