Jardin＜限定盤＞

Montreal-based musician Josie Boivin established the distinctively airy, dreamy, and sway-encouraging personality of her solo project, MUNYA, with a trio of EPs followed by her full-length debut, Voyage to Mars. While the songs on those releases were sometimes dusted with longing or melancholia, the follow-up, Jardin, offers 35 minutes of pure warmth and affection. A tribute to those who inspired and encouraged Boivin in her youth, its named for the gardens in the neighborhood where she grew up in Saguenay, Quebec. The album begins with a literal greeting, "Hello Hi," whose cushy synth timbres offer a soft landing inside MUNYAs dreamworld. Eventually, programmed beats kick in and get the groove going before sweet, seductive vocals welcome with "Hello, how you doin?/Hello, how you feelin?/Ive been waiting for you." She follows that track with a French-language slow jam, "Nuit Blanche," and the more uptempo track "Nelly," both of which are populated by woozy pitch bends, sighing background vocals, and a steady diet of whimsy, all of which, like her debut, set Jardin in a universe of its own. Despite this palette consistency, she still manages to surprise with entries like the breathy "Caramel (Mon Coeur Souvre a Toi)," which sounds rooted in a combination of bossa and 60s French pop teen balladry, and semi-disco outing "Un Deux Trois," a song whose mechanized vocals about dancing serve as a metaphor for pressing onward. If theres a minor misstep on Jardin, its a cover of New Orders "Bizarre Love Triangle" thats so thoroughly refashioned as to seem both unnecessary and justified here, given the songs supportive ethos. When Jardin ends on the sultry, tempo-shifting "Vanilla" and its closing, encore-like burst of rock, its tempting to set the toggle to "repeat all." ~ Marcy Donelson