La maline

Editors’ Notes If Marie-Jo Thério’s alternately rustic and atmospheric balladry belies her musical theater background, it retains a theatrical flair for captivating storytelling, rich characterization, and immersive scenery. On the gorgeously ethereal title track, the mid-’70s Springsteen-style passion play “Café Robinson,” and the fiddle-finessed, empty-saloon serenade "L'oiseau de paradis," you can practically see the sunset dissolving in the distance, with the last song’s sustained acoustic-string bends determined to slow the passage of time. The pervading melancholy is undercut by irreverent interstitial skits, but they only serve to enrich the other tracks’ mise-en-scène.