Acadie

After producing groundbreaking albums for, and often with, Peter Gabriel, U2, Robbie Robertson, and the Neville Brothers, Daniel Lanois's self-produced debut album proved at once familiar in its thick, swampy sonics and startling in its pared-down, intimate scale. Lanois's song cycle is steeped in the francophone cultures both of his Qu©b©cois heritage and of his adopted New Orleans home, mixing English and French as easily as Lanois himself alternates from soulful croon to plainer folkiness. Populated with rural characters, his detailed stories evoke a lost time through two-step acoustic love songs, narrative ballads, and a hushed, propulsive prayer; "The Maker" features a ghostly, restrained harmony vocal by Aaron Neville. The underlying historical link between old Acadian culture in his title and its descendant Cajun culture surviving in Louisiana's bayous and backwoods gives the songs and these performances a haunting, and haunted poignancy. --Sam Sutherland