Josephine Foster's archaic approach to music is thoroughly indicative of her background. She is an aspiring opera singer turned classically trained songwriter who can play guitar, piano, harp and ukulele. Her tastes lend her a sound predating pop music as we know it, making her an old-school traditionalist. Think of a Joanna Newsom type of adoration for antiquity, only not so wrapped up in individual vision and ambition.
Foster's unassuming nature can be quite refreshing. On her solo debut, 2000's These Eyes Above, her crooning melodies empathetically skate over rolling ukulele. Her work with The Supposed on 2004's All the Leaves Are Gone resulted in her own brand of bashfully wandering and playful psych-rock. And most recently, This Coming Gladness, her last solo release in 2008, quietly strums by with less accessibility but more eccentricity and experimentation.
However, her latest, Graphic as a Star, relates more to another album from her catalog that lends some creative control to her influences. On 2006's A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, she recreates German Lieder through classical music of composers like Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert and puts them to words by writers such as Johann Goethe. Similarly, Graphic consists lyrically of Emily Dickinson poems while Foster's consistently subservient acoustic and harmonica provide simple background.
The polished sound and treatment of the classical music on A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, which keep it abstractly impressive if nothing else, is substituted for unintrusive strumming. The reverence of not only her soft acoustics and voice, but also her treatment of Dickinson's work—not a word is altered or added throughout the 27 illustrations of her work—make this piece an unadorned tribute intended to be humbling to performer and listener alike.
Using the words of another can seemingly draw a line between strictly writing music and creating song as an organic artform, which always made Elton John's relationship with Bernie Taupin especially unique and, well, bold. It takes a special songwriter to mold a song musically around such specific pretenses. Even though Foster has shown the capacity to do so in the past, it appears as though that simply wasn't her intention here.
Although all of her albums retain subdued manners of traditionalism, Graphic is almost offensively simple. Musically, if the guitars on All the Leaves are Gone were overzealous in their willingness to occasionally hit listeners in the gut (albeit timidly) Foster is now playing devil's advocate. Several songs here are vocals naked of any decoration except for the occasional chirping of birds, and anything more consists of unobtrusive acoustic guitar and harmonica. Maybe a ploy to bring Dickinson's work to the foreground, Foster checks musical dynamism and imagination at the door.
Ultimately, it's hard to get over the musical sacrifices made to embellish Foster's connection with Dickinson. Her operatic vocals are held in check, as if afraid to imply personal creativity and detract or alter the poetry's inherent value. Even still, Foster's classical background and attitude of professionalism toward her art will never allow her to make unpleasant music. Only Graphic as a Star should be counted as background music, maybe to listen to while reading some Dickinson.
