Album Review: Gillian Moranz, Quiet

Folk and country music are in Gillian Moranz's blood. The Vancouver-based singer-songwriter hails from the musical family that brings South Country Fair to Fort Macleod, Alberta every year. Given her pedigree, it's no surprise she pays exquisite attention to detail on her debut EP, the eerie and desolate Quiet.

A lonesome harmonica haunts the title track. Moranz's bare fingerpicked notes droop like dead branches on trees dotting a ghost town. “It's quiet when we know what we must say,” she points out incisively. And when she sings, “It's quiet in the arms of our lovers / Silence pressed against the snow white sheets,” the unsettling quiet becomes palpable.

On “The Brink,” Quiet's most traditional song, Moranz insists, “You ain't livin' if you ain't livin' on the brink.” If that's true, the seductive narrator on “The Devil Makes Three” is living life to the fullest. “I'll be the girl with a red dress on / And nothing in between,” she teases over lightly plucked banjo and sparse fiddle. She coaxes clandestine trysts, tempting her target of affection with the taste of “forbidden fruit.” “Together we'll break all the rules / Just don't you call out my name.”

Though Moranz plays within long-established tropes of folk & country noir, anyone with a good ear will surely call her name.

Quiet was released October 13, 2021.
Listen to it here.