The Boston-area folk music scene is a vibrant one, boasting a variety of diverse artists, one of which is singer-songwriter Catie Curtis, who has called Boston home for nearly all of her twenty-year music career. Curtis is known for her compelling melodies, relaxed grooves, and subject matter ranging from philosophical to political, romantic to maternal. Since the release of her last album in 2009, Curtis has toured extensively, playing a number of diverse venues ranging from Chicago's legendary Old Town School of Folk Music to the White House. She's also spent that time writing and testing out new material, developing a collection of masterfully written lyrics that serve as the heart of her newest record, Stretch Limousine on Fire. On the new album, Curtis, a Lilith Fair alum who's been dubbed a "folk-rock goddess" by The New Yorker, delivers some of the finest material of her career: ten original songs that push at her own musical boundaries and explore "the difficult edges of passing events" in life, harsh realities that are tempered with moments of fleeting beauty. The sound, like the subject matter, is rawer than Curtis' previous work, which has been featured on episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Dawson's Creek and several other hit shows and movies including the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie Our Lips Are Sealed. Pete Seeger says of Woody Guthrie ~ "Any fool can be complicated; it takes a real genius to be simple." There should be a corollary for today's folk-popsters: Any fool can write a love-gone wrong song; it takes a real genius to write a love-gone-right one. No urban songwriter does that better than Curtis. On her hushed and deeply felt new CD, "Long Night Moon," she sings grippingly about love's better moments: tracing the shadows on a lover's face, and the sweet delights of staying warm on a cold day. Like Guthrie, she is fearless about using simple imagery to draw us in: a night sky full of fireflies, or "headlights crossing my bedroom wall." Also like Guthrie, she can fine-focus political complexities into a stark, telling couplet: "If they can keep us fighting about marriage and God/ There'll be no one left to notice if our leaders do their jobs." ~Scott Alarik, Boston Globe.