Butterfly Boucher – Scary Fragile

Album Reviews • Monday June 22nd, 2009 • 10:39 am

Sweet freedom, that’s what Australian transplant Butterfly Boucher has now. The one-time nomadic daughter – her artist parents drove her when young all around the continent with six sisters in tow – is free of two different record contracts and sounds nimble and rejuvenated on her new offering, Scary Fragile. That juxtaposition of words – scary, fragile – could have been how she’d feel post-breakup (with the pair of music labels), but instead she’s a young woman unleashed.

“I found out I can only be who I am, I can only do what I can/ I won’t try to describe the relief” – her epiphany is our aural pleasure, 11 sleek songs long. The lone beef here may be that: Most songs hover around 3 minutes and seem like works in progress – but maybe that’s what she intended. Even so, it leads to half the tracks being anything but memorable, just plain fleeting.

What works: “For the Love of Love” harbors vintage background vocals that supplement Ms. Boucher’s supple voice perfectly. Its 1-2-3 punch with “I Found Out” and “Just One Tear” is relentless and romantic. Yea, o’er the course of these sonic vignettes we hear (and practically see) dear Butterfly’s heart turn every shade of blue. Love is scary! Love is fragile!

The more plaintive title track and Grey’s Anatomy-tastic “Bitter Song” grant the listener a reprieve from all the bounce and joy contained here. No slight to B’fly – it’s amazing she’s not jaded after scrapping with label honchos as she has. Elsewhere the jouncy “Keeper” has this anti-It Girl informing her man, or Every Gent, that he can either communicate or leave the house: “Tell me that you need me, tell me I’m a keeper/ Tell me something I don’t know/ Think before you say it, say it if you mean it, mean it ‘cause it doesn’t show.”

“Gun for a Tongue” sticks out as quirky in a way, if because it’s the glossiest track here. What begins as something bordering a moody Zero 7 track fast turns a pop sidedish. Curiously, it’s the only track here not touched by album producer David Kahne (Regina Spektor, Kelly Clarkson). Butterfly – and, yes, that’s her given name – has sounded like ReSpekt before, in both song structure and vocal tics, on “Never Leave Your Heart Alone,” but the saving grace of this record is that her songs, while buoyant and unabashedly poppy for a Nashvillian, never lapse into that patented saccharine trap. This might be attributed to Kahne’s heady previous work with Paul McCartney and The Strokes.

In the end, this album won’t change your life (though it’s already changed hers), but it will lend you a Masters course in Optimism. “Every day I feel a little more like me … Yeah, I’m fine.” After being dropped in rapid succession from a stateside label and then a UK brand, Butterfly’s fresh out of the kitchen (or the cocoon, as it were) with a lean, not-mean batch of tunes. They’re mostly about romantic relationships but laden with metaphoric meaning for the contractual haze she’s survived. “I’ve got the photos, and I’ve got the scars to prove it/ I’m so tired and I’m so glad, for what I have.” She – and a thousand songwriters probably wishing to mimic her – can heave a hefty sigh of relief. And she does. It’s great to hear.

Tagged as: Australia, Nashville, pop/rock, singer/songwriter