Jacob Humber wants you to “Stick Around”
I’m in the town where I went to college. It’s spring break, but I’m not going anywhere. Students and certain migratory birds are on the move. I hear spring makes people restless. Jacob Humber may have had this restlessness in mind when he wrote “I like it better when it’s colder / seems everything has […]
Gabrielle Grace’s “I Wish That I Could Tell You” Is A Song For What We Don’t Say
Nashville singer-songwriter Gabrielle Grace is a master of paradox. “I Wish That I Could Tell You” is a song about the pain of leaving things unsaid – but the song itself is a confession, a declaration, eventually an explosion of articulate desire. The musical arrangement makes the song feel like a journey, even though the story […]
Max García Conover Hears the Crows Calling on “caw”
Max García Conover says his upcoming album, everything in winter, is “somewhat inspired by a suitcase full of letters my grandfather wrote” in the 1940s, to the woman who would become Conover’s grandmother. Conover’s writing is grounded in close attention to the way people tell their stories. “May this be the kind of night / […]
“Oh, Shadowless” is Neko Case’s Loudest Lullaby
Neko Case’s voice comes from a world where birds are stronger than windows, and always get where they are going. Her first, unaccompanied words in “Oh, Shadowless” make the silence they break feel like something solid, a windshield with night behind it. “Oh” is the roundest of sounds – but when she sings it, it has […]
Scott McMicken and THE EVER EXPANDING Say it’s Time to Begin with “What About Now”
If Scott McMicken’s name, voice, or preoccupation with long-distance transportation seem familiar, you probably recognize one or all of these things from his time in Dr. Dog. His new project, Scott McMicken and THE EVER EXPANDING, release their debut album, Shabang, this March 31st. Out ahead of its release is the first song off the […]
Emina Sonnad Restarts the Music with “Turn the Record Over”
Emina Sonnad’s “Turn the Record Over” is an elegant song, built around a warm piano with just enough reverb to sound full but lonesome, like it’s playing in a sunlit but empty room. The piano carries the waltz-time foundation, while the drums provide atmospheric surprise. The drum sounds are particularly hands-on: the wooden click of […]
Lonely Choir Sings a “Kind Song”
This will be nice, I thought. A kind song, drawn up from the well-wishing wishing-well of someone’s heart. And sweetly, sweetly, Lonely Choir begins, “I hope you get hit by a bus.” So it’s that kind of song, the kind that lets you know right away the title is ironic. This is a detailed anti-prayer, […]
Saintseneca’s New Monster is “Wild Violent”
Saintseneca’s songwriting is a unique beast. Lead singer Zac Little writes with internal rhymes and assonance as dense as those of Gerard Manley Hopkins (“Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name” – Hopkins could’ve been an indie singer-songwriter, if he wasn’t a […]
The Stolen Hours of H.C. McEntire’s “Soft Crook”
It’s a small thing, but also not a small thing, for someone to hold your hand on the street, to kiss you goodnight in her doorway. “Never seemed to ask for much / a lover not afraid of love” H. C. McEntire sings on “Soft Crook” – and it’s not too much to ask. Love […]
Laura Lang Writes a “Love Letter”
Like T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Pete Townshend’s album The White City: A Novel, Laura Lang’s “Love Letter” isn’t what the title says it is. In fact, she tells us in the chorus, “This isn’t a love letter, ’cause I can’t let it be.” So my question is, […]
