Review: Big Little Lions carve out mental health storybook with latest album, ‘Inside Voice’

Human existence is a tapestry – tattered, torn and beaten with harsh threads, feathered and tired. These days, you’d be hard pressed not to find someone, somewhere amidst such personal turmoil they nearly burst at the seams like a rag doll. Hope flutters as large fluffy cotton candy clouds that effortlessly, but purposefully, glide across a sky as crystal blue as a baby’s bonnet. Ever the astute purveyors of sparkling, melancholy-laced folk-pop music, Canadian-American duo Big Little Lions are so off-beat they’re unmistakably cool. Their new record, Inside Voice, soaks in kaleidoscopic shimmers that peek through lush, star-gazing optimism – pinned in appropriate amounts of misery and mental decay. Musicians and singer-songwriters Paul Otten and Helen Austin bound far and away as two majestic and playfully intense panthers in flight, eyes locked on something that’s just out of our view but perfectly in theirs.

“Stay In” is a cloudy, rhythmic retreat – the merciless gargoyles dragging them back into paralyzing fear and despair. “It’s not that I don’t wanna be a friend / It’s the little voices that say / You don’t need to leave the house today,” they sing. The sunlight barely nudges through the curtain, and any potential of freedom floats further away and appears more distorted. “I just need the silence to survive,” Otten and Austin confess. The percussion accelerates, and the words fall harder into a snow-laced blizzard, the truth becoming harder to discern. Every moment could be the last, yet such admissions fuel them further into an expansive cosmos of adventure. The heavens crack open, and there is, indeed, a golden thread of light warming their bodies.

“Get There” is a slumbering beast of self-pity, acoustics ringing through the fog. “One foot in the future, the other in the past / Tolerating the present, hoping it goes fast / My body and mind need to be together at last,” they plead. It’s four-minutes of heart-rending, and their feet drag in the mud, caking their boots, as they navigate a grey-washed world. “Lonely Blue” trudges along in a similar fashion, and the emotion rains as a somber, late-fall downpour – neither relentless or misty, just middling at best. Production (led by Otten) and arrangements – thanks to a band of players including Daisy Squires (fiddle), Ben Plotnick (fiddle), Doug Cox (dobro, lap steel) and Kaitlyn Raitz (cello) – serve each song’s necessary mood and emotional heft. It’s often classically BLL (glinting musical sparks in a bed of rich songwriting) or decidedly risky and rejuvenating.

“Cookie Cutter” is a plucky piano pouncer, an underdog anthem on cherishing uniqueness and accepting the cracks as they are. “Line us up, check we fit / Don’t stand out a little bit / Be careful or they might / Point a finger in your pretty face,” they sing, highlighting outrageous social standards. The ivories tinker with a vaudeville slant, and they rosin up their songwriting bows to puncture the bubble. They then offer a moment of clarity, “That’s all garbage we know better / Don’t you hide, don’t let it fester / Be bold you might help another on the edge out there feel safe.”

With “The Outside,” the duo wander through their mind’s forever-winding halls. “Dreaming of life with a different spin / Always on the outside looking in,” their downcast brow full of lines and sorrow. “Minimize” is both a knee-bending plea and a political-barbed rally, as they work to comprehend the evening news and their personal confusion. “While I try to resist, you keep pushing me down / You’re more at ease with the face of a clown,” they confront. “When you don’t believe, what choice do I have / Oh please stop saying it wasn’t that bad.”

Big Little Lions are the kind of crafts-people who are easily taken for granted – their melodic and lyrical structures are marvel to behold. Their catalog, starting with 2014’s Paper Cage EP, is truly impressive. Their fourth full-length release, Inside Voice continues to demonstrate how vital the folk-pop duo is to the music scene.

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