Norma MacDonald
Old Future, Noyes Records, noyesrecords.limitedrun.com
Love, loss, and a pedal steel guitar are natural bedfellows. For Norma MacDonald’s latest, she fully embraced the Americana that she dabbled in on 2015’s Burn the Tapes. It’s reminiscent of the country turns that Neko Case and Jenny Lewis took in the 2000s. Though she aimed for a specific genre, MacDonald is ultimately in search of freedom on Old Future — from responsibilities, from anxieties, from particular people and even from her own shadow. There’s nothing avante-garde here. Tried and true formulas dominate. But there’s nothing to grow weary of, either.