A beautifully observed baroque masterpiece, part dream pop, part futuristic psych-folk with ambient synths and Josephine Foster’s plaintive guitar. Godmother is a slowly unfolding song cycle that marries a myriad of previous musical escapades with electronic experiments. Exploring new horizons on this record, it sees Foster at her most expressive and hypnotic. Now back home in the mountains of Colorado, Josephine’s 20-year journey to this new nirvana becomes enthralled further with a symphony of synths that sound like they are played in some neighbouring netherworld, through cotton gauze. It’s music that’s devotional, spiritual, a fitting soundtrack for any journey within or without, a means to experience places and vibrations beyond the boundary of time and space. Discussing the record, Josephine explains “You may notice me travelling a bit further sonically from our precious earth, aspiring to rise into broader astral perspective, to contemplate the light and origins of it all, as I do believe there is a grand source that is the sum of it all, us all. Performing all the parts on this recording, you may sense me focussing gestures of my singing into the instrumentation, which is a very great relief indeed, as the voice has such grand dreams to be set free.” “With her haunted, theatrical delivery, Foster cuts an arresting figure.” Pitchfork “Out of time yet timeless” The Wire

Josephine Foster’s music is spellbinding. Each of us at Jumbo have been mesmerised by her discography. All The Leaves Are Gone in particular often finds itself on the Jumbo stereo. Electronic experimentation takes Foster into a whole new territory on Godmother. Foster’s unmistakeable vocals can at times be haunting in a similar way to her synths on this record. May the ghosts of this brilliant album haunt us forever.  FFO: Joanna Newsom, Julia Holter, Meg Baird, Karen Dalton.

By Martha