Kathleen Dunbar
Finally Home
Sing Like A Bird Music
This 17-track album focuses on the vocal prowess of Dunbar and
the melody of the tunes, rather than instrumentation. It balances
a fun, folksy sound reminiscent of songs passed down through
generations and the folk of the 60s and 70s. Dunbar’s voice is
soothing and the songs are entertaining. - Girlistic Magazine

Kathleen Dunbar sings in a staccato falsetto that eerily recalls Joni Mitchell’s best work. Her voice is high, sweet and thin like a reed instrument, subsuming the sharper edges of words into a breathy trill.

But unlike Mitchell, Dunbar doesn’t just stick to folk music on her new album, Finally Home. Her outstanding accompanists play all kinds of instruments: guitar, mandola, banjo, fiddle, Irish whistle, trombone. One track even features a theramin. Using their fierce and apparently endless instrumental talents as a backdrop, Dunbar travels from lilting Celtic-inspired tunes, to New Age-ish wailings, to chatty folk songs.

However, my favorite songs on the album are the country-style tracks. When she’s backed by Gawain Mathews’ low-country twang, Dunbar’s pretty voice gets a little tougher, a little warmer, and a lot more fun. She’s at her very best on a song called “Red Boots,” a long narrative tune about a country girl growing up and learning to pick a man. The song is funny, sweet and foot-stomping, a promising example of the things Dunbar is capable of.
This is a great album by a talented musician who, like the heroine in “Red Boots,” is going places fast..

Favorite Track: “Red Boots” - Online Rock

With "The Storm in Our Head" Kathleen Dunbar (and her [literally] amazing band of talented Devils) achieves a rare and utterly unique blend of musical and lyrical symmetry. Kathleen's songs find themselves warmly at home in the singer/songwriter tradition - thoughtful, well-honed, melodic expressions of love, regret, and hope interwoven with stories of religion, revenge, longing, and devotion - at once instant and abstract, personal and universal. Song-by-song the project builds on these themes, balancing emotional delicacy with the grit and sex of authentic shuffle blues (see the opening track - "Everybody Knows"), and an impressive and effective arsenal of world-music influences. The Better Devils employ it all - jazz, americana, even hints of Bossa Nova and traditional Celtic ballad - giving flesh and bone to the images evoked by Kathleen's mellifluous voice. The result is a group of seventeen songs that work together, both holistically and individually. Clearly, no small feat. Kathleen Dunbar and The Better Devils is a San Francisco band that has found itself. "The Storm in Our Head" proves it. Highly recommended! - Russell David

There’s a purity in singer-songwriter Kathleen Dunbar’s voice rarely found these days in a world full of husky, weathered voices. Reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s early work, Dunbar’s Finally Home is a beautiful collection of 17 songs woven within the genres of folk, jazz, celtic, and country. Dunbar’s knack for songwriting is immediately evident on “The Circle Returns to the Place Where it Starts," a catchy number describing the cycle of life. Irish whistle accompanies the track, giving it an additional lilt that leaves you smiling.

Let the long road end in a homecoming
Hard road let it end in the heart
You belong here my dear
Always remember the circle returns to the place where it starts ...

Dunbar quickly switches it up on “Invocation," a haunting Middle-Eastern themed prayer featuring the fiddle and djembe. You can tell she’s not just singing words here, she’s sharing a spiritual experience. That’s one of the reasons this album is so enjoyable, nothing’s put on here for show; it’s all believable.

It’s on sunshiny folk numbers though where Dunbar sounds most at home like on “I Send Out My Love” (featuring a group chorus on the refrain), “Red Boots," and “Round and Round." Not to say she’s not just as talented crossing other genres, it’s just the purity of her voice shines best on simple instrumental arrangements (one of the reasons an a capella number like “Sweet Rain” is heaven to the ears).

The title inspiring track, “You’re Finally Home," is a touching number about finding oneself, where Dunbar’s letter perfect vibrato dances joyfully with an irish whistle.

You told me let your heart break
You told me you’re safe now
You told me we’ve taken you in
You never have to do it by yourself again
You made it love, you’re finally home ...

Dunbar’s debut album is to be applauded for its originality, cohesiveness, and polished musicianship. If this album were a book, I'd read it again and again from start to finish, each chapter introducing yet another dimension of Dunbar’s musical vision. - Skott Freedman

Music Emissions Review: Listening to Ohio raised San Francisco based Kathleen Dunbar's latest album, The Storm in Our Head recently has just renewed my appreciation for story-telling songs. It's rare nowadays to come across a catalog that connects several generations of music and harkens back to a gamut of genres- bluegrass, Americana, blues, folk songs from the "olde country" (where ever that is in your head) and even Latin jazz.

Before e-books, readers, laptops and even written word, this album reminds the listener, songs were what we had and really all we needed to pass along tales of love, forlorn loss, morality and hidden life metaphors. A theatrical poetess emerges from the first note to take the listener's hand on an interesting character journey. What happens to the heroine when "a superhero can't stop the wreck?"

Displaying pieces of Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Alannah Myles, June Carter and Carole King, the tempo rides several raucous hills and quiet valleys from hand-clapping, knee-slapping, 60's twisting, 70's classic rock to a slow Tennessee waltz. A dichotomous Black Magic Woman/"Sweet Carline"/"Snake Charmer" and wounded, bruised victim that will take the hit ("this is the part where I get a broken heart") but will triumphantly rebound. Straying from the others, "Blue Tattoo" was an unexpected "smoky club, gardenia in hair" surprise in the Latin bossa nova vein. The contrasting genres mix beautifully to form a potent eye of the "storm" to which you'll gladly be swept. - Music Emissions