Watershed

Description

The most heavenly voice on earth. Canadas finest female singer/songwriter. Daily Telegraph

A seductive restatement of her talents. A set that marks the return of a singular talent to the top of her game. The Times

Watershed highlights what lang does best fulsome ballads sung with precision-timing, intelligence and a humorous twist.

Mojo

Nonesuch releases on vinyl, for the first time, k.d. langs 2008 landmark album, Watershed, which represented the first time she assumed the role of producer, as well as writer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. As the title suggests, it represents a milestone in langs groundbreaking career.

As with any challenge shes met in her unparalleled career, lang is a natural behind the boards in the studio. Watershed has an intimate feel and a sophisticated sound that highlights the warmth in langs voice, the maturity of her songwriting and the simple beauty of her arrangements. The Grammy Award-winning artist draws on her wealth of experience with an impressively wide range of genres to fashion a revealing portrait of the artist at that time. She explained that Watershed is like a culmination of everything Ive done theres a little bit of jazz, a little country, a little of the Ingénue sound, a little Brazilian touch. It really feels like the way I hear music, this mash-up of genres, and I think it reflects all the styles that have preceded this in my catalogue. I didnt feel the need to be genre-specific because this experience felt so wide open. The New York Times observed Few singers command such perfection of pitch. Her voice, at once beautiful and unadorned and softened with a veil of smoke, invariably hits the middle of a note and remains there.

lang recorded Watershed in Los Angeles with such longtime collaborators as keyboardist Teddy Borowiecki, guitarist David Pilch and pedal steel player Greg Leisz, plus special guests the trumpeter Jon Hassell and banjo virtuoso Noam Pikelny (The Punch Brothers). The album is a highly personal complement to langs 2004 Nonesuch debut, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, an album she has described as a love letter to her musical DNA brilliant re-interpretations of signature songs from fellow Canadian artists like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Jane Siberry. Subsequent Nonesuch releases include Sing It Loud (2011), and Recollection (2010), langs first career retrospective. Most recently, in 2017, Nonesuch released Ingénue (25th Anniversary Edition) to celebrate the double platinum-selling, Grammy Awardwinning albums silver anniversary. Ingénue was langs fifth album, following a quartet of records that pushed the boundaries of country music. The anniversary set includes remastered versions of the albums original 10 tracks, including its huge hit Constant Craving, and the second disc features eight previously unreleased performances from langs 1993 MTV Unplugged episode, recorded in New York Citys famed Ed Sullivan Theater.

Called The greatest female singer in the whole world by fellow Canadian Michael Bublé, lang has had a distinguished career. In addition to a fruitful collaboration with Tony Bennett, she has performed alongside luminaries including Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, and Loretta Lynn. She sang at the closing ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. lang has contributed music to the soundtracks of several films, including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Happy Feet. She has also appeared in a number of films, including Salmonberries, The Black Dahlia, and Eye of the Beholder. lang is a four-time Grammy winner and eight-time Juno winner and, in 1996, she received Canadas highest civilian honor, the Order of Canada.