Charlotte Day Wilson - ALPHA (Deluxe) (2021) Hi-Res

On her debut album, the Toronto singer-songwriter and producer draws variously from gospel, folk, and adult-contemporary influences; no matter the style, every song is a showcase for her powerful voice.

Light has always been a precious resource in Charlotte Day Wilson’s music. The Toronto singer-songwriter and producer’s vast voice is like a canyon that the sun can’t access; the percolating soul and quiet storm that surround it flicker like candlelight. “I went to a funeral today just so I could feel something,” she sang on “Funeral,” from her 2018 EP Stone Woman. It’s a particularly bitter line in a catalog that has often traced life’s hard edges.

Her debut album, Alpha, is an escape from the twilight. Darkness once consumed Day Wilson, seeping down into the bottom of her lungs. Now, she’s preoccupied with luster and scope. Her voice—and what a voice, deep and passionate, cast in the mold of Anita Baker—feels less crepuscular, less intimate, and more capable of levitating cars and uprooting whole forests.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Mountains,” a stirring gospel number featuring full-throated choral chants, handclaps and foot stomps, and the sound of rain in the background. Day Wilson, raring to add to the sense of grandeur, describes scaling peaks and searching valleys. Yet the lyrics scan as insular and personal, like a classic break-up song. “Mountains” is co-written by one of the kings of the form, Babyface, and gives Day Wilson license to curse her broken heart and even call on the spirit of Travis’ mopey classic: “And when it rains only rains on me.” The teetering-on-the-brink drama is ratcheted up to incredible levels. Day Wilson is the kind of performer who can pull off approaching every one of her hurt feelings like it’s worthy of an Iliad.