Pitchfork

Many listeners first became aware of Jana Hunter through her appearance on 2004's catalystic folk compilation Golden Apples of the Sun, curated by her friend and sometime collaborator Devendra Banhart. Not out of place for a neo-folk comp, her song "Farm, CA"-- a dark country-ish tune with haunting strings and lackadaisical acoustic guitar-- didn't fully intimate the depth and diversity of Hunter's songcraft and wise-beyond-her-years croon. Then she hit us with the dusky, dreamy full-length Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom. Similar in feel to Banhart's early lo-fi bedroom album Oh Me Oh My, and to a degree, CocoRosie's early ramshackle naiveté (minus the corn and bloated self-importance), the dimly lit, introspective, and cathartic nature of that excellent debut felt almost hermitic. Appropriately, the record also marked the launch of Gnomonsong, the label started by Banhart and Vetiver's Andy Cabic.

For her sophomore release, There's No Home, Hunter stands in the light, brings along a few friends, and seems ready to go emerge from her cave. The album opens with "Palms", a meditative invitation ("I open my hands to you/ I've showed you my palms/ I've showed you my soft skin for what it really was") wherein Hunter's breathy, long-held chorale-like voice reaches out to someone who she senses is nearby, but in fact, is "already long gone."

Hunter's tone quickly changes with the sassy second track "Babies", a tune evocative of Moon Pix-era Cat Power. One of Hunter's poppier numbers, its "bah bah bah" backing vocals are accompanied by bouncing drums while strings and guitars spiral around. It's also a great example of what makes Hunter's music so rich: Here, she tills a fertile bed of melancholy, only to yield colorful, joyful flowers. One contributing factor to the album's relative lightness-- like Blank Unstaring, it's pretty blue on the whole-- is the concise and fluid songwriting: Most of these songs are under three minutes.

The emotional complexity-- or rather, saddled contradictory feelings-- aren't all that set her apart from her peers: She also draws on influences from outside folk which, largely due to her finger-style treatment and accompaniment choices, wind up adhering to a folk template. For example, the excellent "Vultures" pairs a rhythmic, flamenco-like guitar part with syncopated drums, evoking a dusty desert highway. The country- and gospel-tinged "Bird", and the experimental "Pinnacle", add fusion drum flourishes, angular electric guitar bursts, and feedback drones that wouldn't sound out of place on a Ghost or Six Organs of Admittance record. "Recess" is a somber ballad akin to some of the Pretenders' saltier sad songs. And "Sirens", stylistically in line with numbers like "All the Best Wishes" and "The Earth Has No Skin" from her debut, is a ballad with minor-chord arpeggios and the waltz-like time-signature used in all those 60s girl-group breakup songs.

Hunter's winding melodies possess a mysterious déjà vu quality, like lost tribal folk hymns, and the captivating sense of mystery inherent in her voice, which is at once both husky and wispy, is enhanced by keeping the subject matter purposefully vague. She often employs the Björk-like lyrical conceit of using "it" to refer to some ambiguous source of discontent or exaltation. Once again, take the poetic "Vultures" ("I can feel my thoughts a circling like vultures do/ When it comes on/ Comes on so strong") or the reflective "Babies": "For many reasons I left my home/ Most of the reasons I still don't know." Which leaves us to guess, finding our own empathic reasons.