KD Lang: Hymns of the 49th Parallel

By GRAHAM REID

Herald rating: * * *

Lang has come a long and digressive path to get to this point, a soft-centred and sensitive collection of songs written by former fellow Canadians (although a few, such as Bruce Cockburn, still live north of the 49th parallel).

Like Aaron Neville, Lang could sing the Montreal phonebook and make it sound memorable and significant. She managed it on songs about smoking with her earlier Drag album.

Here there are mixed results: Neil Young's After the Goldrush (which lyrically could sound dated) and the confidence brought to Helpless polish them up beautifully, and Joni Mitchell's Case of You has the advantage of relative unfamiliarity. Cockburn's country-folk strum on One Day I Walk has an ethereal and elevating quality.

But on Jane Siberry's The Valley she offers an airy, slightly self-important delivery and comes off like Anne Murray, and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah gets such a straight treatment that it adds nothing to versions by Laughing Len, Jeff Buckley or the many others who have treated it with equal reverence.

Ron Sexsmith's Fallen seems a modest delivery pumped up by piano and orchestration.

There's a bit too much maple syrup in some of these treatments, but here's the thing: Lang's audience isn't the country-twang camp following of old and has aged with her through the Tony Bennett period.

Her people now aren't that much different from those for Rod Stewart, older and more mellow, and much happier sitting hearing their star with the cushion of strings and sensitive arrangements. Those people will enjoy this in the firelight.

Label: Nonesuch