Imagine a warm, sticky Texas summer night on a creaky front porch, swaying slowly on a swing, crickets chirping and a thousand stars above you. This is the place Sahara Smith’s songs seem to belong in on Myth of the Heart, her debut album overseen by heavyweight producer T Bone Burnett and produced by Emile Kelman. Smith is a young singer-songwriter with a worldly croon that can be sultry or youthfully restless, depending on her mood. It is clear that Smith has studied the work of legendary wordsmiths—Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and T.S. Eliot—a lyric like “The world’s on fire, and we’re all made of snow/There’s nothing we can do but let our bodies go,” fits in effortlessly with such a cache. Many of the songs on Myth, all penned by Smith, flow quietly and patiently, though this doesn’t make for a one-dimensional album. “Angel,” for example, is gentle and billowing, allowing Smith’s voice to soar. It is followed immediately by the fast tempo of “Are You Lonely,” a sassy song with a catchy chorus and Smith’s signature imagery. The LoneStarState receives adoration throughout the album, including opener “Midnight Plane,” where Smith coos, “I wanna ride through the desert on the only road that knows my name/I wanna fly into Austin in the cradle of a midnight plane.” The accompanying pedal steel practically covers the listener in dusty desert sand. Myth of the Heart is a gorgeous album for all lovers of carefully chosen words, rich imagery and ethereal vocals, but it is especiallyfor Texans.
