For their third album as Lovespirals, Anji Bee and Ryan Lum again create a lush series of songs that synthesizes disparate influences into a warm, enveloping listen. For all that the duo's roots have been seen as being goth, their previous albums touched on a variety of approaches with aplomb, and at this point it's just as accurate -- and ultimately limiting -- to say that Long Way From Home is blues, or country, or rock and roll. It's a blend that has a low-key presentation, an easygoing pace, and an ear for all kinds of unexpected details that change the feeling of a song in an instant without disrupting it. The traditional standard "Motherless Child," where the album title comes from, shows this clearly, where the harrowing lament of the lyric becomes a cool flow, Bee's vocals paying homage to famous interpreters of the song like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday without trying to actually replicate them. Meantime, a song like "Caught in the Groove" has a gentle, echoed percussion flow that sounds like late eighties Cocteau Twins, twangy guitars and piano that suggests majestic early seventies country, and Bee's coolly sweet vocals calling to mind crooners from an even earlier time. This resplendent variety, which defines the sound of much of the album, helps the band further cement its own protean sound, increasingly recognizable on its own merits rather than just being the sum of its many parts. Some individual moments feel very thrilling -- the wheezing guitar/harmonica background to "Treading the Water," the sudden low-key funk on "Lovelight" -- without overwhelming the overall flow, a fine balancing act. -Ned Raggett

It's very rare these days to come across an entire CD which you will listen to over and over from beginning to the end non-stop, and even rarer to find one which makes you want to grab everyone you know and tell them "you must listen to this."

However such is the case with the third release, Long Way Home, from the California based duo Lovespirals, consisting of Anji Bee on vocals and Ryan Lum on instruments. Fusing sounds from jazz, chill, folk, Americana and even a touch of country, this latest release will grab you and wrap you in an aural blanket of warm with a soothing hand on the brow that shows off why the indie music scene is our salvation from the commercial corporate music machine, and Lovespirals is one of it's shinning stars.

From the opening jazzy/country sound of the aptly named "Caught In The Groove", to the groovy feel of "This Truth", to the lazy summer afternoon feeling of "Sundrenched" this CD is a wonderful blend of vocals and music coming together in an intertwining dance of harmony deftly expressing emotions in both delivery and composition.

Perhaps the one track that shows off their ability to combine emotion with production is the track "Motherless Child", which had been released as a remix by MoShang on his Asian Variations CD earlier this year. On the Long Way Home version, Lovespirals have gone with a less is more approach and stripped the song down to the barest and starkest in this presentation. Anji's emotion filled delivery holds nothing back in delivering the full emotion of grief and loss. While Ryan's haunting and simple layered guitar work echoes her delivery, but neither overpowers the other, and the two come together to powerfully capture the feeling of being alone and isolated.

Throughout Long Way Home, the duo convey a wide range of feelings and emotions as words and music come together or swirl around and through each other in a mesmerizing dance of audio. Lovespirals have found the perfect balance, resulting in a release that never falters from one track to the next that is rare these days, and is the perfect aural vacation everyone should take at least once a day.

Lovespirals is singer-songwriter Anji Bee and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lum. The act spawned from the '90s electro-pop band Love Spirals Downwards. Long Way From Home is the duo's third full length release, embellishing dreamy pop with touches of jazz, folk, blues, and Americana.

The music of "Caught in the Groove" is soft and atmospheric, serving as a peaceful backdrop to Anji's seraphic voice. Her voice fades into the melody of "Empty Universe" as Lum's bluesy guitar takes the spotlight. "Treading The Water" puts a nice harmonica twist on the languid pop sound.

The stand out tracks "Once in a Blue Moon" and "This Truth" take on a deeper jazzy sway, while the beautiful "Sundrenched" is the superlative example of Lovespirals' stargazing pop style. "Lovelight" adds a light retro funk to its pop mixture. The disc also includes an ethereal cover of the traditional "Motherless Child".

The evolution of Lovespirals into the band that they are today has been a long road. From the band’s early years as Love Spirals Downward with a vocalist all but forgotten for Anji Bee’s lovely, dreamy, and expansive vocal pleasantries, to their current album, Lovespirals have always been a band of change. Their latest, the wonderfully titled Long Way From Home, is one of superior work and can easily rank as the band’s best work in either incarnation.

Still a part of the Dream-Pop sound that formed them, the Anji Bee years of Lovespirals has been an essential element for the band. With her ability to wrap around Ryan Lum’s musical explorations, Lovespirals is not afraid of trying on new clothes, framing them in gorgeous soft tones of various flavours. The album begins with a ‘career-best’ blues song that accentuates the album’s direction. “Caught in the Groove” is a beautifully produced, dream-blues (if I may coin the phrase) song. Using a song as a metaphor for the deterioration of a relationship, this captivating tune is made all the more extraordinary by Lum’s blues guitar.

That same bluesy guitar shows up in “Once in a Blue Moon, and “Nocturnal Daze.” Ryan Lum’s guitar leads have a distinct ‘70s feel throughout the album. Some songs recall the past musical history of the band. “Sundrenched” lends itself to the stream of that past. The album closes with the excellent musically and lyrically sex-soaked “Lazy Love Days.”

The needle may be “caught in the groove” but, for me, that’s a good thing where this album is concerned. -Matt Rowe

On their third album, Lovespirals shift away from overt electronica in favor of beautiful, understated folk and blues ballads.

If sophomore album Free and Easy saw Lovespirals' sound at its biggest, Long Way from Home is the duo's most intimate, forsaking house beats and jazz flourishes for understated slide guitar and acoustic strums. Ryan Lum's production is more mature than ever before; unless you really listen for it, you won't be able to tell that he plays and records all the instruments himself - maybe not even then - and the drums sound warm and clear, betraying no hint of sampler or sequencer. Instead, Lum lets his arrangements take center stage, with emotive guitar solos harmonizing with electric organ on the bluesy ballad "Once in a Blue Moon" and relaxed acoustic strums highlighting jazzy piano chords on "Nocturnal Daze." Anji Bee's vocals are beautifully languid, the sweetness swathed in melancholy on the plaintive "Caught in the Groove," adorned by floating background harmonies on "Treading the Water," and sensual yet dreary on the pair's stark rendition of classic spiritual "Motherless Child." Fans of the pair's more overtly romantic material will appreciate unabashed love song "This Truth," and there's even a hint of the ethereal dreaminess of Lum's previous project, Love Spirals Downwards, on the fuzzy overlapping guitar tones and meandering vocals of "Sundrenched" and "Lazy Love Days." It's not an understatement to call Long Way from Home the duo's most accomplished work up to date; as enjoyable as their previous explorations of laidback electronica and jazz fusion have been, this album captures Lum and Bee's warm musical chemistry in a way that previous releases only hinted at. Rating: 4 out of 5. -Matthew Johnson

Ahh, the good ol’ days of alternative rock. I remember walking into a record store and being at the clerks’ mercy, begging he or she to put me on to a new band that would make me “feeeel” something, which is how I grew to love bands like My Bloody Valentine, The Breeders, The Smiths, etc. If this was 1992, and I asked my favorite mom and pop record store clerk what should I be listening to, I would hope they would point me in the direction of “Lovespirals.” Empty and sad, but of full of emotion, their album “Long Way from Home” is medicine for those that dig the alternative. How can you take a gut-wrenching classic like “Motherless Child” and make it sadder? Let the “Lovespirals” get a hold of it. It’s easy to fall into the loose, country-tinged groove of “Caught in a Groove” and let your soul be taken for a ride. By the time the “upbeat” “Lovelight” comes on, you won’t mind being “A Long Way from Home,” and I think you’ll want to stay there. -Ray Anderson