Everything I Touch Runs Wild

Though her music has attained recognition as it’s been included in many feature films (Strange Days, Stealing Beauty), Lori Carson remains a much overlooked singer-songwriter with many fine albums to her credit. Everything I Touch Runs Wild, her third solo effort, is arguably her best, a near-perfect collection that combines her innate pop sense (“Something’s Got Me”) with an obsessive need to self-reflect at every turn (“Make A Little Luck,” “Whole Heart”). Carson’s breathy, intimate vocals (“Snow Come Down”) give her compositions a voyeuristic, diary-like setting from which her delicately-picked acoustic guitars breathe life. An expert cast of accompanists — guitarist Knox Chandler, cellist Jane Scarpantoni, drummer Anton Fier, for whose Golden Palominos Carson has sung — never overpower these fragile proceedings. A quiet cover of Todd Rundgren’s “I Saw the Light” points towards Carson’s muted pop side, but it’s the ambient, imagistic rush of “Train” that best exemplifies this songwriter’s efforts to perfectly mesh sound and image.