Rebound

Nicole Reynolds mines her past loves and returns for something unordinary.

by M.J. Fine

FAMILIAR FACE: Reynolds played a few sets at the Folk Fest last month. She celebrates the release of her new CD at Tin Angel on Thursday. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

First you see what's wrong with the world, then you see what's wrong in your heart. For singer-songwriter Nicole Reynolds, Act III is about what's gone right.

If it seems like Reynolds just threw a CD release party at the Tin Angel, you're not wrong. In January, she came to plug This Arduous Alchemy, which dealt sadly but bravely with the end of a relationship. She returns Thursday to celebrate her third record, Unordinary Mine, and this time, most of the lyrics seem to come from a place of adoration and uncomplicated love.

She sets the tone with "Wonderin" and "Clothes Line," raving about her gal's kisses and playing house, and raises the bar with the sweet, sly "We Could Have Met."

"No love is uncomplicated," Reynolds says in an e-mail from her native Pittsburgh, "but my new relationship is much less complicated than my other relationship that I had while living in Philly. I'm totally in love and am with an amazing person and I know that comes out in my newer songs."

While enrolled at Goucher College in Baltimore, Reynolds first came here for a summer internship at the late, lamented Point in Bryn Mawr. At the time, she thought being a promoter was the easiest way to make a living in music.

"When I applied for college, I knew I wanted to be involved with music in one form or another, and I didn't play any instruments, so the only other option was arts administration," she says. In a catch-22, her major mandated music classes. "That's when I started playing guitar, and I liked it way more than the industry stuff."

By her junior year, she'd switched her major to jazz guitar performance, but she didn't start writing her own material until after she graduated and settled into a brownstone at Ninth and Pine. That's when she found something worth writing about.

"I experienced my first love and breakup in the city, which was both good and bad for different reasons, like most things are."

Reynolds hadn't really sung in public until a year after she recorded the protest songs that made up her 2006 debut, Wolves Won't Eat Us, but she's certainly cultivated a distinctive style. Looking and sounding much younger than her 25 years, she has a girlish, flirtatious lilt to her voice and a deep respect for her craft. Last month, she played a few sets at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, including one workshop where she got to play a lot of her early, topical songs and another where she shared the stage with Janis Ian, Jean Ritchie and the Refugees.

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"I think we were all confused about what exactly 'women's music workshop' meant, so we ended up singing all types of songs," Reynolds says. "I did write a song specifically for that workshop a day beforehand. It ended up being about growing up in a very conservative way and feeling like shit because I was way different and then coming across folk music for the first time and feeling almost immediately relieved. These folk musicians were saying things that I had always felt, but had never heard anyone say."

Until recently, Reynolds was touring whenever possible, spending summers hiking through Utah and Colorado, and splitting the rest of her time shuttling between New Bethlehem, where she works on an organic farm, and Collingswood, N.J., where her girlfriend lived. Ever the rambler, Reynolds stopped in Wyncote just long enough to record Unordinary Mine at Kawari Sound with bassist/guitarist Adam Winokur and drummer Matty Muir, among others.

"Most musicians worked for free or for very little, which was a huge help and honor," Reynolds says. If it were up to her, she'd be able to share their work just as freely.

"I'm really not a great business person and don't feel comfortable with some aspects of selling music," she says. "I almost wish I could trade people a song for a dozen eggs or something."

Still, selling the fruits of her labor on CD Baby beats working for the man. "I was convinced when I applied to some regular jobs," she says, "and they scared the shit out of me."

(m_fine@citypaper.net)

Nicole Reynolds plays Thu., Sept. 4, 9:30 p.m., $12, with Sarsaparilla, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0978, tinangel.com.