RetroSpecto

Eliza Gilkyson has had a long, solid career as a writer of hushed, strikingly literate songs that move at their own pace, and while she is certainly accessible enough to have garnered a large audience, she hasn't tried to go out of her way to court one, and this lack of concession makes her body of work refreshingly honest and sturdy. RetroSpecto, released on her own Realiza label, brings together key tracks from the now out of print albums that preceded her signing with Red House Records in 2000, along with a handful of demos and even a Christmas song she recorded in the 1950s when she was just nine years old. It's hardly piecemeal, though, and flows with an obvious cohesiveness, a measure of how dependable she's been as both a writer and as a performer all these years. Among the highlights is the lead track, "Beautiful Dreamer," which is, well, beautiful, and the stunning and emotionally sincere "Last Dance," where Gilkyson's voice hardly rises above a hoarse and subtle whisper. Gilkyson's version of her own "Rosie Strike Back," a jangling, rocking treatise on spousal abuse that was a key track on Rosanne Cash's King's Record Shop album, is also here, along with the zippy "Getaway." Even the Christmas demo, "A Little Star Came Down," has a charming energy. It's difficult to imagine how Gilkyson ever got lumped into the new age bracket, since she has much more in common with artists like Lucinda Williams or even Dolly Parton than she does someone like Enya. RetroSpecto works as a handy catch-up introduction to this insightful artist who truly deserves a wider audience.