Lynn Miles

This Ottawa singer-songwriter possesses a voice that vacillates between tender and touching love songs a la Sarah McLachlan to country-pop offerings of Shania Twain. Love Sweet Love is Miles’ fifth album and the follow up to 2003’s Juno Award-winning Unravel. The 11 songs share a common theme of love in all its manifestations and the accompanying accoutrements that relationships bring — joy, loss, despair and emptiness, to name a few — that can fashion the other side of love’s story. A stellar backing band that includes Ian Lefeuvre and Peter Von Althen of Starling and Prairie Oyster guitarist Keith Glass accompanies the melodious Miles. "1000 Lovers” is one of the best tracks with its bouncy country rhythm. On the piano ballad "Try Not to Be So Sad,” Miles’ voice resembles a soothing mother trying to put her baby to sleep as she fends off melancholy. "Night Drive” is a metaphor for Miles’ life on the road where she searches for a travelling companion to listen to her burdens and as she croons, "most of all I need someone to talk to.” Another road song, "8 Hour Drive,” features some bouncy banjo, and is yet another high. With lush instrumentation and slick production, Love Sweet Love, drips out of the speakers like golden drops of honey.