Say Goodbye

Intimacy takes time, and timing. Liz Janes, wife of Asthmatic Kitty’s A&R man, Michael Kaufmann, and one of the few musicians who has performed live with experimental recluse Jandek, came of age in Olympia’s fertile punk DIY scene, all the while keeping her own deep-seated ideas confined to notebooks. That changed with the release of 2002’s Done Gone Fire, her debut, produced by Sufjan Stevens. Helmed by the label’s oft-employed knob twiddler Rafter Roberts, Say Goodbye is best interpreted as a lush folk schematic. Janes has evolved into an intimate, enchanting singer, capable of tear-dropping soul (“Anchor”), lounge-y atmospherics (“Bodies,” “Firefly”) and lullaby croon (“Time & Space”).