VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Unaccompanied Voice: An A Capella Compilation
Secretly Canadian Records
www.secretlycanadian.com

I've always loved good a capella music, and have long wondered why more albums like this haven't been made. The trick to putting together a compilation like this, however, is finding artists whose singing voice is decent enough to actually be unaccompanied, and here, the label did an excellent job making their selections. Mia Doi Todd's rendition of "La Vie En Rose" is truly beautiful and as full of heart-breaking longing longing as the words themselves, while Appendix Out's "Four Nights Drunks" is a lurching song about man and his cheating wife. Jarboe proves she can be just as scary without her industrial instrumentation backup as she can with it in her haunting contribution, "And I Name Myself Hag." Another favorite here is Richard Buckner and P.W. Long's redneck hillbilly ditty "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down." There are 24 tracks from 24 different people here total on this ambitious compilation, and all of them are pretty cool-other artists on here worth mentioning are Pedro the Lion, Modest Mouse, David Grubbs, and The Grifters.  by Holly Day