Gayla Marie – Gypsy Love

Something about the 21st century has made Louisianians restless indeed. Take Gayla Marie, for example—she’s been to Nashville, Austin, and even Hollywood trying to establish herself as a triple singing/songwriting/acting threat, and despite being very good at all three (you may have seen her in an episode of “Treme”), she now finds herself back where she started—geographically, anyway.

Her Emmylou-meets-Bogguss drawl, often assembled in gorgeous harmonies, is now gracing straight country ballads that sound more Tennessee than Thibodaux, but lyrically they tell tales more complex than the trailer park. What happens when the conquering hero returns home conquered?

Okay, Gayla may start her third album with a story of an “Ex Con” who gets a little too familiar with his daughter, but many of her characters, as if taking a cue from the abused, leave home to seek better lives. Naturally, they don’t find it out there—“Star” ends about as you might figure, and “Old Lady Chandler” is not a portrait of proud matriarchy.

But that combination of emotional maturity and backwoods beauty, the latter set off by a gentle and usually drummer-less mix of shimmering guitars, is what’s special about Gypsy Love: the pain of a failed dream set against the solace of the already known.(Not for nothing do her simple pledges of love carry spiritual titles like “Eternally” and “I Would Die for You.”)

It’s a perfect listen for survivors engaging in a little reflection on a lazy late afternoon, and also a suggestion that a well-traveled love, like a hard-won philosophy, is a little sturdier for it.