The frontlady of Nathan, Juno-award-winning alt-country trope, is growing a new creative branch in her career.
Keri Latimer has teamed up with her husband Devin, Nathan bassist, to release Lucky Stars, the debut album of their new roots project, Leaf Rapids.
The project and album’s approach aims to embody the sense of “open space” of life living in the Prairies, with the goal to create an atmosphere of sitting back and enjoying an intimate house show in the format of a studio recording. With this, the musical couple enlisted the help of old tour mate Steve Dawson, roots musician and producer, who recently relocated to Nashville.
“For me, this whole album has been about trust and learning to let go, which is hard because I’ve been a control freak for my whole life,” Latimer says in a statement. “I had a conscious intention with this record to write the songs and hand them over to Steve so that I had no control over anything but the lyrics and melodies. It’s not something I do easily, but I think he really got what I was trying to do. I like to think that we got each other.”
Finding compromise between Dawson’s preference for “nearly live recordings” and Latimer’s “painstaking production techniques that I usually follow,” the session resulted in 12 songs with moods ranging from upbeat to reflective to atmospheric. As heard on the above “The Man Who Sold The World” cover, Latimer also experiments with the theremin on Lucky Stars, taking a serious approach to the instrument.
Other tracks include the catchy “Gravity,” the moody “Galaxie 500” and the moody and atmospheric “Vultures.” The title track in particular was written for Devin’s mother, who lives in a nursing home. “She fell in love when she was a young woman, but her husband died very early, and she never wanted to meet anyone else,” Latimer says about “Lucky Stars.” “The song describes how she is simply and gracefully waiting to be reunited with him.”