Mindvalley Emily Fletcher The M Word

The first album from this Long Island-based ensemble was a tuneful and ambitious collection of psychedelic folk-rock tricked out with polished harmonies and arrangements featuring elaborate horn and string charts. If anything, Tuesday, April 19 often sounds a bit too elaborate for its own good; the arrangements certainly reflect the trippy, philosophic bent of Gene Stashuk's lyrics (which also suggest a Christian undertow), but fairly often they also tend to overpower them, and on these sessions the Unspoken Word sound more like a studio project than an organic group with a personality of its own. The irony is this has a great deal to do with the precision with which the Unspoken Word play their music; Angus MacMaster's keyboard work is especially impressive, with a striking dynamic sense, and vocalist Dede Puma would have done any number of Broadway musicals proud with her rich, expertly modulated instrument…