Dawn Landes – Bluebird

When your marriage collapses and your world falls apart, what next? For songwriters, tradition dictates you channel the sadness into a ‘breakup record’; an epithet that Dawn Landes begrudgingly accepts as befitting her latest album.

Written following her divorce from fellow musician Josh Ritter (whose own breakup record Beast In Its Tracks was released last year), these 10 tracks are as emotionally charged as might be expected, yet avoid the obvious pitfall of over-directness.

Cry No More is one of the few to address the album’s inspiration undisguisedly (“No matter how hard I try the pain lingers / Our love’s gone dry like grease on my fingers”), with a more poetic, oblique approach otherwise presiding. This imparts a moving universality to the gentle title track, the plaintive Heel Toe and the gossamer Diamond Rivers, all adding up to a beautifully judged exemplar of how to turn private pain public. [Chris Buckle]