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World Cafe Next: Martha Scanlan

Martha Scanlan.
Courtesy of the artist
Martha Scanlan.

This week's World Cafe: Next artist is a folksinger who has been living on a family ranch in Montana for the last five years. Her name is Martha Scanlan, and after releasing her first two albums, she embraced a rural lifestyle with no music on her mind. But music came anyway.

Scanlon's third album, which came out earlier this year, is called The Shape Of Things Gone Missing, The Shape Of Things To Come. The imagery and even the pace of the album conjures big skies and open spaces. She used her Kickstarter money wisely and headed to Portland to record with members of The Decemberists and Black Prairie along with singer Amy Helm. The spacious arrangements, which are just right for these songs, sound lovingly improvised in the studio. You can hear a couple of songs here, and the rest can be found on World Cafe's Tumblr.

Copyright 2015 XPN