A cat, sitting in the shade. A dog, resting its chin on the windowsill. Love, soft as a rabbit’s ear. The velvet comforts of domestic animals drift, in casual snapshots, through the jazz-folk daydream of Billie Marten’s fifth album, Dog Eared. The title speaks to the literary singer-songwriter’s sense of being a little worn, but loved, looking back at marked moments. It feeds into a sense of nostalgia that emanates from a record whose warm, fuzzy sound nods back to late-1970s Laurel Canyon. The splashes of electric piano like old Kodak snaps of swimming pools; the guitars sepia-toned; wonky notes a little out of focus and Marten’s rich melodies making direct eye contact with the present, as if from another time.
Having launched her career in her mid-teens as a writer of pretty and precocious folk songs, Yorkshire-born Marten, now 26, left the UK to record this album in New York. The plan was to make a “full band record” and relinquish a little control. Producer Philip Weinrobe (best known for work with indie artists Adrianne Lenker, Laura Veirs and Buck Meek) called for live takes, intuition and no headphones during the sweltering month the 10 musicians recorded “huddled in a circle” at his Sugar Mountain studio in Brooklyn. The cover art – by Brazilian-born painter Daniel Borgonovi, only after he’d heard the record – is a portrait of Marten without eyes. It reinforces the idea of her feeling her way, sharpening her ears and relaxing into the sonic cues.
