Versatile mix of folk, country, country-rock, soul and hot-jazz

It’s hard to pinpoint this Los Angeles quintet, as they range through acoustic folk, country, horn-tinged soul, and hot jazz. If you had to pick one to represent the bulk of the group’s second album, it’d be country (or country-rock or Americana), but there are whole tracks that take you somewhere else before returning you to two-steps, waltzes, twanging guitars, bass and drums. Leslie Stevens’ singing brings to mind the high voices of folksinger Joan Baez, Americana vocalist Julie Miller and country star Deana Carter. But Stevens sings with more of a lilt than Baez, less girlishness than Miller, and when the group ventures to country-rock, it’s without Carter’s southern ‘70s overtones.

The finger-picked guitar and songbird vocal that open “Los Angeles” spell stool-perched, singer-songwriter folk, but harmonium and choral harmonies thicken the song into a hymnal. Stevens’ high notes fit equally well into Lucinda Williams-styled Americana, cutting through the twangy low strings and baritone guitar, and pushed along by driving bass and drums. The Badgers’ range is impressive, tumbling along to a “Gentle on My Mind” shuffle, hotting things up with tight jazz licks, adding soul with Stax-styled horns, and laying down waltzing fiddle ballads, country-rock and the spooky “If I Was Linen.” The latter’s off-kilter piano and musical saw spookily echo the main theme of The Elephant Man.

Stevens’ sings country songs spanning the relationship lifecycle of blossom, maturity, lethargy and dissolution. The first is powerfully drawn by the budding relationship of “Old Timers,” rooted in tangible images of childhood’s emotional urgency. The latter provides a grey coat to the loneliness of Ben Reddell’s “Winter Fugue.” In between are irresistible romantic smoothies, longed-for and abandoned lovers, and finally realized kiss-offs. The full cycle comes together in the physical and mental escape of “Salvation,” with Stevens realizing “when I pull off the road / to get a better view / now I can see the start of us / and the end to me and you.”

The classically-tinged “What Fall Promised” sounds like a good outtake from Sam Phillip’s Martinis and Bikinis, and the closing “It’s Okay to Trip” provides sing-along old-timey country-blues. One might complain that the Badgers can’t quite decide what kind of music they want to play, as they’re capable of a range of sounds rooted in country, rock and folk without staying shackled to any one. The variety’s laudable, but it leaves it to Stevens’ conviction and vulnerable warble to provide an emotional through-line to the album. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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