Song Lines

Like almost every other live release of the new millennium, Between the Line: Sara Bareilles Live at Fillmore is a multi-format package appearing as a CD/DVD set and a Blu_Ray release, all containing the same set. It's a crisp, clean production designed for home theater systems, but it also works very well as a standalone live album, since its lean, lively arrangements – often featuring extended piano-and-voice segments, with "Fairytale" being performed entirely solo by Bareilles – wind up showcasing the melodic craft behind her songs.

The inside booklet for Norwegian pianist and composer Ketil Bjørnstad's Seafarer's Song begins with a small statement by the Spanish author Juan Jose Millas about the plight of the truly shipwrecked, the ruined in our postmodern times, where messages of distress don't come in bottles, but inside the real human bodies of refugees. It speaks volumes about the music included here. Bjørnstad has given us yet another album of the water to be sure, something he has done since the inception of his solo career for ECM, but he has done so in a completely different way. There is no jazz on the Seafarer's Song, and yes; that's a plus. Utilizing his long-standing band which includes trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, guitarist Eivind Aarset, drummer Per Lindvall, bassist Bjorn Kjellemyr, and cellist Svante Henryson, Bjørnstad ups the ante by employing the brilliant if unconventional vocalist Kristin Asbjornsen…