Austin, Texas-based Tish Hinojosa (een-o-HO-sa) sings and plays a straightforward style of singer-songwriter folk music, colored lightly with strains of her Hispanic heritage. Sign of Truth features Hinojosa performing 12 songs, all of which she wrote or co-wrote, backed by an able band.
Music of Hinojosa’s type would have been known as “MOR,” or “middle of the road” in the Seventies. I’m not sure what to call it today. Perhaps “soft folk” as opposed to “soft rock,” (surely one of the worst musical oxymorons of our era). Her songs are not complex musically or lyrically, occasionally bordering on trite or simplistic, but always tasteful and sincere.
The first two tracks, “Sign of Truth” and “Mona Lisa by the Rio Grande,” are mid-tempo folk songs, one on a social theme, the other a portrait of a woman unlucky in love. Both songs are filled out nicely by Hinojosa’s backing musicians, who include Marvin Dykhuis on guitars, Eamon McLaughlin on violin, Lloyd Maines on pedal steel, and Chip Dolan on keyboards and accordion. Dolan’s accordion, particularly, gives a nice texture and South-of-the-Border feel to many of these songs. Margo Timmons of the Cowboy Junkies provides harmony vocals on “Mona Lisa.”
One track that stands out is the third, “Fire in Winter,” a love song with a Cuban jazz beat, which Hinojosa introduces by reciting a poem in Spanish. A snazzy horn section and Dolan’s accordion are a nice touch.
“Taste of Dying Summer” is also appropriately atmospheric, this time in a dusty, Old West way with haunting fiddle lines, a jazzy liquid-sounding bass and a galloping tom-tom rhythm.
After three fairly forgettable numbers, things pick up again with the bilingual love song “Hey Little Love,” a bouncy bit of Tex-Mex soul, and “Wildflowers,” a rock-soul hybrid that’ll take you back to the sound of the group Chicago circa 1975. “Faded Souvenir” is a bit of faux-Sixties pop, complete with a tick-tock two-four beat and a swelling horn section on the choruses.
Hinojosa sings in a pleasing mid-range soprano, which is placed out front in the mix so that it’s never overpowered by the band. The production on the entire album is first-rate. All in all, Sign of Truth is a pleasant, if not overly memorable, country folk album.
(Rounder, 2000)
