Shelter, Kristina Jacobsen’s new album, touches on a wide-range of subjects, from hard-won personal epiphanies to the liberating properties of a down-home Cajun dance hall. She’ll celebrate its release with a party this weekend before heading off to Sardinia on a Fulbright grant for a year of teaching, research, and of course, songwriting.

Kristina Jacobsen
Shelter (Three Roses Music)
A review
On Shelter, singer/songwriter Kristina Jacobsen offers 13 original tracks that include danceable honky-tonk americana and reflective folk tunes, and lyrics in English, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, Finnish, and Navajo. What ties them all together is captured in the album’s title: “Songs for me increasingly are providing a sense of shelter from the world, but also as a way into the world. When I had all the songs on the album put together, and I was thinking, What unifies all of these in different ways?—for me, it was, yeah, a sense of safety and shelter that songs give me.”

Songs can be a safe place to explore and resolve deeply personal issues. “In This Body,” dedicated to those living with invisible illnesses, reveals Jacobsen’s own struggle with a debilitating mind/body connection that forced her to own her emotions. “What I Didn’t Know” relates one individual’s difficult but liberating lesson in how to love herself. “Running on Empty”—“Running on empty/Only fumes to spare/Or did you want those, too?”—addresses the need to take care of yourself and find a balance in the face of others’ unrelenting demands.

It takes a certain courage to open such personal struggles up to public view, but the payoff is twofold. First, it lets others who are dealing with similar issues know that they are not alone. Second, says Jacobsen, “My own journey to healing—a lot of that has been through art and through songwriting.” (Some of it has apparently also been through the exuberance of music and dance, as expressed in the lively Cajun tune “Maison Dancer,” cowritten with Sonya Heller.)

In “I Don’t Wanna Smile,” Jacobsen claims her space, chronicling an encounter with a well-meaning gentleman whose good intentions are swamped by his patriarchal attitude, as unconscious to him as it is patronizing to the object of his attentions. Other highlights include “Lucinda,” a touching ballad about a favorite truck consigned to the junkyard; “Waldorf Woman,” a humorous take on growing up in the idyllic bubble of Waldorf schools; and the reflective folksongs “Every Last Drop” (savoring life’s sweet and often fleeting moments), “We Can’t Go Back” (cowritten with Camille Grey, recovering youth’s sense of wonder), “Medium Is the Message” (cowritten with John Parish, recommending the rewards of inefficiency), and “Lost in Flight” (cowritten with Jason Murray, “cloud-coasting” into a new chapter of life). Perhaps the album’s most lovely melody is tucked into a hidden track, “Frytårnet (Lighthouse),” cowritten with Morten Kjaer. (Lyrics and translations can be found on Jacobsen’s website.)

Jacobsen is ably supported by Meredith Wilder (harmonies), Camille Grey (lead and harmony vocals, autoharp), Alex McMahon (pedal steel, acoustic guitar, baritone guitar, electric guitar), Emily Anslover (fiddle), Jason Murray (guitar, classical guitar, harmonies), Ian Brody (cello), Matteo Scano (accordion), Ignazio Cadeddu (Sardinian guitar, from a field recording). Brody, McMahon, and Murray will join Jacobsen at the release party, which may be the last time you can catch her for the next year—unless you are traveling to Sardinia.

Shelter CD Release Party
Tortuga Gallery
901 Edith SE
Saturday, May 18, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 at the door (includes a copy of the album)

© 2019 Mel Minter