"Haunting" is an overused adjective, but ghosts seem to waltz in and out of Maggie Bjorklund's debut album, Coming Home. An album of spine-tingling, spectral folk-pop buoyed by guest appearances from Mark Lanegan, The Posies' Jon Auer and, perhaps most affectingly, Visqueen's Rachel Flotard, the Danish pedal-steel player fleshes out her soundtrack-friendly songs with the work of other collaborators such as Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino.
Coming Home sounds more Tucson than Copenhagen, with Bjorklund's playing and songwriting conjuring up romanticized roadhouses and late-afternoon sunlight filtered through whiskey, smoke and windows coated with decades' worth of dust. In "The Anchor Song," Flotard anchors a siren's call with world-weary vocals that mingle regret and longing with a thread of hope that seems just out of reach. It's enough to make you want to jump ship and join her in whatever voyage she's on.
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