Though the canon of great singer-songwriters is littered with examples of artists who don’t possess traditionally attractive voices, it’s possible there’s no element in songwriter’s craft that’s more important than voice. Like an actor’s face or an orator’s dramatic flourishes, a songwriter’s voice – whether commanding like Aretha Franklin or squeaky like Daniel Johnston – is the quickest identifier of his or her work, the purest and most expressive instrument, and the one that will shape much of your impression of the persona that artist has created. As such, to change that creative signature is daring, if not dangerous, something that becomes obvious the first time you hear Dylan’s nasally pinched croon on 1969’s Nashville Skyline or Neil Young’s vocoder-aided robo-voice on 1982’s Trans – two albums where the songwriter’s familiar vocal fingerprints were so obscured that listeners were left ...