An air of mystery pervades the narrator's words in the melodic album opener, "Blue Adeline," and although loss is hinted at ("Remember how you went where I could not follow?) this song celebrates life ("Blue Adeline, I'll keep you through time") rather than mourning the loss. With image-filled lines such as "When you get here I'm gonna meet you like the ocean meets the shore" and "Brokedown screen door, don't bother with the bell," sensuality and suggestion pervade the three verses of "Heavens Hold The Sun." I must also mention the prominence of drums/percussion on this disc - waves of crashing cymbals wash through "Blue Adeline," while in the latter half of the hook-laden (and pop-sounding) relationship number "To The Wire," to great effect, they surface, submerge, and surface again.

"Midnight Ringer" is a subtly constructed song of love and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if its inspiration was a guy from Wisconsin - in the lyric the narrator references this mystery man as a "shotgun singer." Recently, when Delmhorst performed locally, she introduced the number with "This one's partly about England," which I guess was a reference to the (pre-Redbird) early 2003 Chautauqua card-playing in the bedsit/concert tour of the U.K. (by Peter Mulvey, Delmhorst, and Jeffrey Foucault). The ensuing "If Not For Love" could be a companion to the latter since it embraces the cycle of life, alludes to a number of its aspects, while repeatedly posing the enquiry "If not for love what are you for?" Random sound samples (static, a spoken voice) are woven into the Blues-tinged "Riverwide," while "1000 Reasons," which follows, is a joyous travelogue - "I've got a thousand reasons and each one is enough" - that commences in the Windy City and heads out into the wide blue yonder and beyond. Having already mentioned, a couple of times, the utterly engaging melodies Delmhorst has birthed for this collection, to my ears (now mature in years) at times there's a swirling Beatles-esque, Magical Mystery Tour period feel to "Birds Of Belfast." Conceptually a dreamy summer idyll, the lyric poses more questions about life and love, thereby exploring similar territory to "If Not For Love."

Delmhorst focuses on the plant world in "Oleander," it's one of the most toxic known to man, and mentions a lotus in the opening lines of the ensuing "Kiss It Away." So far I haven't mentioned the insertion, albeit fleeting, of spiritual references in some earlier tracks and during the penultimate "Freediver," a paean to the land and the oceans in which Delmhorst adds "all of the angels are facing outward." As for the already referred-to, occasionally raging, lyrical sensuality woven into certain song lyrics, Delmhorst once again engages with that physical - "smelling of the struggle" - approach in the, voice and guitar only, final track "Brand New Sound." There it finds expression in, for example, the almost familiar sounding "I'll make the waves crash on your shore." Having begun this journey with "Blue Adeline," in the closing verse of "Brand New Sound" that colour reappears "Halfway around the world a blue and shaky girl/Is lying underneath the clouds/She's whispering your name/She sings it right out loud, right out loud."

Shotgun Singer is the jaw-dropping song collection that I have always felt Delmhorst was capable of bringing to fruition. My litmus test is, do I really want to hear this record again - for instance, straightaway? This disc assuredly ticks that box. And finally...he may be a relatively new kid on the block, but via Ritter and Delmhorst, Sam Kassirer has already displayed some deft production ideas and touches.

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