Vintage Season
Vintage Season

Nathan Brown
Book editor
Signs Publishing Company

I had listened to Vintage Season’s self-titled debut album only a time or two before seeing Emily Rex and Jarel Kilgour perform at the Manifest Creative Arts Festival in March. But when the two took to the temporary stage in the foyer of Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church, I recognised their songs, demonstrating the distinctive and solid core to their seemingly ethereal music.

Equipped with only their songs, voices and a guitar, Em and Jarel held their own amid the passing crowd, causing more than a few to pause to listen longer. Of course, the album has more instrumentation with gentle jazz styling but the sometimes playful, lilting vocals—from the matured-voiced Emily—are what give Vintage Season its memorable character.

While “ethereal” is the probably the first descriptor for its songs, Vintage Season cannot be dismissed as merely writing and recording daydream music. A song such as “Least Of These” shows Em and Jarel can get in your ears with an energy that matches their message. Other songs have a storytelling sensibility, but one that still works to set a mood with less attentive listening.

Vintage Season is a confident debut album and one of the high points of the Psalter Music catalogue.