Judith Owen treats songs as art, making beautiful piano-based songs that draw on jazz, pop, folk and R&B traditions, effectively dressing up a number of songs with strings. They sound like carefully constructed things, and in “Sympathy,” her lyrics have an allusive quality, looking for sympathy in language that recalls the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” More importantly, they make art sound personal.

 

Her songs present someone at peace with herself, flaws, contradictions and all. In the title cut, she embraces her life, sadness and all; in “Nicholas Drake,” she celebrates her musical passions (albeit for someone who made sad songs), and throughout, she unafraid to be nakedly emotional. She brings a theatrical nature to her vocals, so she dances interestingly on the line between singing-as-self-expression and singing-as-performance, and that tension’s good for the music. Family relations are a theme on the album, and as personal as “My Father’s Voice” is, the singerly performance keeps the song from feeling mawkish, or as if the listener is eavesdropping when hearing it.

 

Owen, a part-time New Orleanian, includes guitarist Richard Thompson as a guest on the album, and she returns the favor on his new album, Sweet Warrior, which also features former Pleasure Club member Michael Jerome on drums. No guitarist does more without playing blues scales than Thompson, and his British folk-derived picking creates a steely, edgy sound that is lyrical one moment and pure energy the next. It and his generally dark worldview have become his trademark, and both are abundantly evident on Sweet Warrior.