Nick Teehan reviews "Secret Admirer"
My album “Secret Admirer” was released in June 2020. Check out this great review by Montreal-based composer Nick Teehan.
SECRET ADMIRER
I’m excited to dig into this work from Zoe Guigueno. Zoe is a Humber College alumnus from British Columbia who moved to Brooklyn and has lived there for the better part of decade as a touring bass player with a load of US groups and artists. I know her best for Canadian groups Words Around the Waist and Fish and Bird. I mention this brief bio because it’s a big step when an artist decides to step out on their own as a leader with this much experience on the road. This is Zoe’s debut full length as a singer/songwriter.
I really like this new development. Zoe writes in this great mixture of Joni Mitchell-esque prose and shortened frenetic phrases that remind me of Lucinda Wiliams or Patti Smith. Zoe’s experience and calm washes over this whole recording, the steady hand is now leading a tiny orchestra. It’s illuminating. Deeply personal and exposed narratives amid warm, and present arrangements. A measured economy of words which give them the weight and breadth that eminently reminds me of her skillful support of other musicians for all these years.
Gettin Away with It is a fun and simple song with this really nicely crafted arrangement that feels like a rent party full of high-art minimalist pop musicians. Changing Seasons tells a meticulous and small inner story infinitely relatable; vivid equinox walks powered by deep whiffs of wet and brittle leaves. Zoe’s style has a smirk that always seems to lead back to a little piece of childhood wonder. When I heard Shoreward, I recalled that Zoe told me she used to commute to school by boat as a child. I feel the same pagan nostalgic quietness in Firefly and In the Water.
I really like the production on this record. There’s a clearness not to be mistaken for ‘clean’. I feel like I can hear the hairs on the bow and the wood in the reeds. Alec Spiegelman produced and engineered this album. All the details feel very present in the best way.
There’s this tacet theme here of Zoe the Explorer; untethered but with strong roots searching for “more places to walk, people to love, this is what we live for.” I wonder where Zoe’s calm curiosity will lead next.
https://zoeguigueno.bandcamp.com/album/secret-admirer-2