Many current artists who have been filed by PR people with that good old singer-songwriter label have long ago abandoned what initially signified it – a singer with a singular acoustic instrument explaining what bothers or makes her or him happy.
Not only have the lyrical themes diversified (a long time at that), but the musical approach has too, from diversified arrangements to bringing in elements that are not essentially either folk, blues or country in some shape or form.
With the fact that she is a vocalist/multi-instrumentalist (flute, guitar, etc.) Chicago’s V.V. Lightbody immediately defies that old singer-songwriter label. As somebody who has collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists, from Harry Styles to jazz drummer Daniel Vilarreal, it just might be no wonder that with her latest album Period Piece she defies it even further by covering a really wide ground from modern pop to jazz and back, often within a single song.
Yet that diversity would remain just that if Lightbody didn’t skillfully combine diverse musical elements into a meaningful musical whole, as exemplified by “Two Swans” or “Patience Like a Pilot” here. The key here is that Lightbody not only shows that she knows how to create unity behind diversity, but that she had a meaningful musical reason to take such a path, and that it all works the way it was intended.
