Recent Indie-Folk Recap - H.Pruz, Hemlock, Bloomsday, and Raquel Denis
And there was a time, of course, when all of this was much less complicated.
The pieces, certainly, were not as long—it’s funny, actually. Staggering, in a way. To look back, even four or five years ago, and see what I was writing about, and how I was writing about it. And to think, in a number of instances, I am certain that at the moment, when my fingers were gracing the keyboard, and when something I had written was set to be published, that I did, at that time, think what I had written was long.
Or a lot.
Over the last four years, certainly, the way I write, and what I write about has changed. And. I mean, it does really keep evolving. I make things complicated. More complicated, or difficult, or unapproachable or inaccessible than they perhaps need to be.
It makes things longer. Because I keep writing myself into things.
There’s a space where writing about music, subjectively, because music “journalism” or music “criticism” or music analysis, to be successful, and have, like, heart or personality, really can not be objective—but there is this space where that kind of writing about music, and writing about yourself, or learning something about yourself, overlap.
Or converge.
I am always writing about convergences now. Or trying to find them. Or creating them where there might not really be one. A stretch, if you will. For the sake of the flimsy narrative, I am attempting to string together.
There was a time, of course, when all of this was much less complicated.
There was a time when I did not feel that I need to live in, or, like, immerse myself in the album, or artist, I wish to write about.
There was a time, certainly, when I did not need to live in, or find myself—or parts of myself, however unflattering, or humbling, or difficult, to face, in the album I was listening to, and choosing to explore on the page.
Over the last four or five years, the way that I wish to write about music, and analytically give consideration to what I am listening to, has changed. And I mean, it does really continue to evolve. I would like to believe that what I was writing was always “thoughtful” to the extent that it could be, but it was inherently much less formal—the writing, if you can believe it, was much more casual, or conversational. There were attempts, often ill-advised, retrospectively, at humor.
I’d like to believe that the writing was always thoughtful to the extent it could be, but it was much less detailed, and more than anything, I think there was far less personal investment, on my part, in writing myself into everything as a character—both a protagonist, and antagonist, of sorts, existing, and often desperate to find reflections, or parts of myself, within the world of the album.
For every album I do dedicate the amount of time that this now takes to “sit down with” or find myself in, and accurately write about my experience with, there are, of course, countless new releases that, despite whatever interest in might have in writing something about them, I often find I do not have the time, or the capacity, to do so with the care and intention I wish to give.
As spring has turned to summer, and with the promise of autumn on the horizon, I have found myself with now four albums, released between the end of March, and the end of June, that have all lingered—staying with me as the days have become longer, and warmer.
There was a time when all of this was much less complicated.
I did not do it often, in the past, and the last time I would have pulled this off would have been in the summer of 2019, but I would, on occasion, group reviews of at least two, if not three, similarly minded albums together into one piece. And I am not even sure if doing something like this, again, is something I have given much consideration to at all over the last four years—if I did, it would have only been in passing.
But as spring has turned to summer, and with the promise of autumn on the horizon, I have found myself with now four albums, released somewhat recently, that are anecdotally similarly minded, or adjacent to each other, that have lingered in such a way that I did wish to find the time, and capacity, needed to sit down with them and thoughtfully listen and reflect.
* * * *
There’s a heaviness to the morning—not from you, you should know.
In November of 2022, what I can remember is downloading Hannah Pruzinsky’s debut under their moniker, H.Pruz—the EP Again, There, but what I am unable to recall with any certainty, or accuracy (and this is, of course, a common issue I am encountering more and more) is how I was first introduced to their work.
And in these cases, where I am unable to remember, I usually will say that it was through Instagram or Twitter—though, then, I wonder who. But, nearly two years removed from the release of Again, Then, and just a few months after Pruzinksy released their first full-length as H.Pruz, No Glory, I wonder who but I also wonder if this kind of idiosyncratic minutiae really matters.
Originally released at the end of March, with the vinyl pressing arriving in mid-May, No Glory is not a “break-up record” by any means, but it is a space where Pruzinsky does explore the end of a lot of things, as they detailed during an interview with Atwood Magazine—“When I was writing the songs, it was simply just the happenings of my life at the time,” they explained. “A life-altering break up that I couldn’t unsee the need to go through with, leaving a job that felt alien to how I saw myself, falling in love—I think the main thing that I was working through, within all this change,” Pruzinksy continued, “was the guilt that I left myself in.”
Outside of their output as H.Pruz, Pruzinksy is also a member of the group Sister.—stylized just like that. With the punctuation at the end. And even in listening to just a little bit of Sister.’s 2023 full-length, Abundance, there is, of course, the expected, slight overlap in aesthetics. However, Abundance, and Sister., I think, as a whole, has just a little bit more of an edge to the music that they make in comparison. A majority of the songs on No Glory barely rise above a hush—a kind of fragility and gentleness that arrives like a whispered conversation between close friends that may, at some points, be so quiet, you may struggle to hear it.
But there is a real beauty in that fragility, and just how delicate these songs are—both in their arranging, and instrumentation, but also in Pruzinksy’s voice, which is potentially the most fragile thing of all, as well as their hyper-literate, and extraordinarily vivid lyricism.
No Glory, sonically speaking, remains relatively in the same place or operates within a similar aesthetic throughout—quiet, reserved, delicate, often genuinely interesting in how it is produced and mixed, and leaning wholeheartedly into the genre of “indie folk,” if you were looking to classify it. However, there is a dynamism that appears in a number of places across the album—the urgent, unrelenting, and brooding nature of one of the album’s advance singles, “I Keep Changing,” is one of those places, and the album’s extremely pensive, slow motion, cavernous third track, “Worldfire,” is another.
I often try, as I am able, in music analysis, not to draw too many comparisons, or if I must indulge a comparison, not to rely on it for too long, between one artist, and another. And there is, of course, a kind of uniqueness or originality to a lot of No Glory, in the kind of nervy, indie-folk sound that it runs with, while a dark, uneasy, often somber shadow looms just overhead, but “Worldfire,” both in the sparse arranging, and in Pruzinksy’s vocal performance, felt very familiar, in a comforting way, during my initial listens through No Glory, because what I realized is that it reminded me of material from Ruins and Grid of Points from Liz Harris’ project, Grouper.
There is an eerie, icy, at times flickering, synthesizer tone that operates just underneath the surface of “Worldfire,” which you can hear in the huge, deliberate silences that hang in between the sound of Pruzinksy’s fingers finding their way across the keys of a creaky, upright piano.
Glacially paced, what makes “Worldfire” so compelling, even in the slow and quiet it works from within, is the way there is this very natural and impressive rise and fall to both the progression on the piano, and with Przunksy’s voice—where they bring things back down to an inward, ruminative place, before allowing them to rise, and rise again, often seeming a little unsteady, before it is all pulled back in again.
Pruzinsky’s lyricism, often, comes from this place that is both very specific, but also very vague, or shadowy—there is this beautiful, shadowy, fragmented nature to a lot of the writing, which is one of the things that makes the album such a genuinely interesting listen. In their fragile, often hushed voice, nearly every song on No Glory contains words that you cannot help but hang onto and slowly unpack, giving consideration to what they might mean to Pruzinsky and where you may be able to find yourself within.
On “Worldfire,” which is where the album’s titular expression is ultimately lifted from (“There’s no glory. There’s no warning.”) there are a number of phrases that, like the balance between the silences that hang in between the notes from the piano, linger well after the song has tumbled towards its conclusion—“Vinegar in the stream—pour it from the bridge,” Pruzinksy mumbles at one point, before observing, solemnly, “Time takes what we leave.”
“I promise it wasn’t all smoke,” they assure someone—an off-stage character in the world of the song. “We met in a snowstorm. What you saw was steam.”
The most lyrically evocative, in how vivid and poetic of imagery is used, arrives near the end of the album on the slow motion, quietly swaying “Like Mist,” which explores the difficulties, or perhaps just the awkwardness that occurs, between two people seemingly missing a connection with one another. There’s a tension, somewhere, within that difficulty or that awareness, and that tension unfolds within the music certainly, but also in Pruzinsky’s writing, with a devastating kind of quiet beauty, and grace.
“Like Mist” has a woozy feeling to it—slowly unraveling, doing so in a bit of a dream-like kind of haze—and musically, it is rich or robust but also rather sparse in terms of how many instruments there are, and how loudly they are being played. The percussion, which throughout the album is one of the elements that is regularly interesting, or compelling, in how it is produced and mixed in, moves along here in a very delicate shuffle, barely creating a rhythm for the contemplative strums of the acoustic guitar, and a quivering, almost haunted sounding electric guitar that provides a kind of punctuation after certain lines.
There is a reluctance that is depicted in the opening of “Like Mist,” that is developed, or elaborated on the further into the song’s narrative we are taken. “You like to dance to the shitty open mic band. You grab my hand and say, ‘We’re gonna join them for the last song,’” Pruzinsky sings, their voice just barely rising above a whisper. “And you know the words to say when they ask us if we’re friends, or just two strangers feeling something good.”
There is a brief chorus that Pruzinsky returns to a few times in “Like Mist,” and the hesitations that are rooted within the song continue to evolve each time they arrive back at this line, which is sustained and bent in an exquisite way. “Mostly, I don’t know where it’s all gonna go,” they confess. And by the third time around, they add, “And I just can’t a read on what this all really means with you.”
*
No Glory opens with “Dark Sun,” which is not the most urgent, or immediate, in terms of its tempo and instrumentation, but it is up there—it is a song that, in how it swirls together, with just a hint of something ominous chasing behind it, or, perhaps, just something haunted, does kind of set the tone for the songs that will follow—an album that walks the line between the fragile and beautiful, and the spectral and at times chilling.
“Dark Sun” is the first time you hear just how important, or at least how genuinely interesting, the percussion on No Glory is—there is a faint clattering sound occurring underneath the frenetically strummed acoustic guitar. It’s keeping the time, yes, but it’s doing so with a kind of ramshackle, held-together feeling, and the same can be said for the brisk way the guitar is strummed. The song is among the few on the album that is less focused, or less concerned, with Pruzinksy’s lyrics, and is more interested in the overall feeling that all the elements conjure, with the real emphasis being on the ghostly melody, and swooning feeling that arrives as Pruzinksy lets their voice soar, just a little, on the lines, “Forget everything else is real—we’re here, in the sun.”
For as invigorating as the pulsating “Dark Sun,” or the nervy, unrelenting “I Keep Changing” can be within the context of the album, No Glory works the best, and Pruzinksy is perhaps best suited to turn things as inward, and as hushed, as they are capable of being, like on “Angel,” which arrives at the halfway point.
A little less mournful, or somber, than “Worldfire,” (but just a little less) and containing less cavernous, upright piano, “Angel” begins with the slow, and delicate plucks of the acoustic guitar, along with these sustained, still rather somber, but very powerful, or stirring, chords on the piano, and underneath, you can hear these little noises—nothing ominous, or even unsettling, but just these small, tinkering sounds that flutter around while the instruments gradually find their way.
Pruzinsky’s vocal delivery here is amongst the quietest it can be—more fragile than a whisper; there are places where their voice intentionally breaks, done in a way to really emphasize the deprecation and sorrow in the lyrics. Throughout No Glory, there are phrase turns that do make you take note, or knock the wind out of you, and “Angel” is one of those places where amongst the fragments, and the narrative being crafted, there are moments of real, very personal anguish depicted. “Can you teach me to be good again?,” they ask, in the opening line. “Keep track of where I fold and bend—and if I break like a sheet of glass, I wouldn’t blame you,” Pruzinksy continues.
Then, just a few lines later, perhaps the most poetic line in the song—“So hold me like I’m the one. Not just a photograph ruined with light.”
This kind of longing, or desperate need for connection, is juxtaposed with Pruzinsky’s depiction of tenderness, or intimacy, and the weight of sadness, in the album’s second track, “Dawn,” which was another one of the songs released in advance of No Glory’s arrival in full, and is, in terms of the feeling it creates with its slow motion, dreamy instrumentation, and the poignant, observational lyricism, the album’s finest moment.
And, if you will allow me, again, to break the fourth wall here, and become a little self-aware, at this point, what I wish to say is that because, in wishing to write about four different albums—with an authenticity and analysis that serves each to the best of my ability, but also keeping in mind my penchant for wordiness, I am trying, as I can, to practice more brevity than I otherwise would. I tell you all of that to tell you this—if I were to have spent the time writing a piece only about Hannah Pruzinsky’s No Glory, something that I would have talked at length about is the way the drums are both played, and how they sound, across the record, because just in terms of the attention to detail, it is really something.
Pruzkinsky recorded No Glory with Felix Walworth—a multi-instrumentalist who is also credited with engineering the album and co-producing it. Walworth, amongst the musical contributions he made to the record, plays the drums, and his dynamism, from song to song, is remarkable, and his capabilities with creating a gentle, yet precise, or sharp sound, on the drum kit, can be heard just below the surface on “Dawn,” underneath the welcome presence of a clarinet, a swooning, gorgeous, and melancholic piano melody, and the pensive, delicate strums of Pruzinksy’s acoustic guitar.
“Dawn” does not move at a glacial pace, but it is one of the intentionally slower songs on the album, which gives you the opportunity to wander into it and inevitably become lost in it. It is gorgeous—like, from the moment it begins, with the slow, delicate, swaying feeling it has. And the pacing allows you, then, to follow along to Pruzinksy’s voice, as it floats through, and the vivid, honest reflections penned within the lyrics.
And the thing about No Glory is that I did not doubt that it would be, upon its arrival, an album that I would enjoy, but it was hearing “Dawn,” for the first time, that solidify the fact that this was an album I would ultimately find reflections of myself in—not exactly unflattering, but certainly humbling, and stark.
The opening line to “Dawn” is, and maybe it is because it resonates so much, personally, the most evocative on the album, and the most revealing—“I love to say ‘I love you’ in my head, when it’s new,” Pruzinsky begins, quietly. “I wanna tell you about that. I wanna tell you it all. I hold you when I wake up, count the creases and the crows,” they continue, before getting to the most poignant, effecting line. “There’s a heaviness to the morning—not from you, you should know.”
From there, the song begins its slow, delicate tumble—oscillating quietly between a kind of charm, and a kind of sorrow, working from a space that I, and perhaps you do as well, understand so well, and find myself in so often—a struggle, or the challenge, to remain in the moment, or feel present. The wish, or the longing, to connect, in whatever way, with those you love, and the feeling of something—the heaviness in the morning that Pruzinsky sings of—that does create a barrier from that connection always forming in the way you would like.
And, yes, a breakup, and other life changes, are at the core of No Glory, but in the vivid depiction of intimacy, and care, between two people, found on “Dawn,” there is a tenderness that, along with all of the other emotions that Pruzsinksy stirs, does linger well after the album has concluded—specifically the final few lines, where there is a surprising, and welcomed, sense of hope and optimism. “After we’ve had forever, we’ll take the overnight to Alaska,” they muse. “Betting dollars on the sun—I’d risk it all for eternal dawn. We can do it like we want to. We can do whatever we want to,” they continue. “You make me wanna do it all.”
Extraordinary in how it plays with silence, and whispers, and stark, truthful, thoughtful, and so rich and vivid in both sound and its lyricism, No Glory is a bold, serious statement that does haunt, and linger, long after you have finished listening; an album that, at least for me, was immediately enjoyable, and genuinely interesting, from an early listen, but the more time you spend with it, you do find yourself growing into parts of it you might not have anticipated.
* * * *
From the corner by the window at Milkweed Cafe, in Minneapolis, on a Monday evening in late June, where a very temporary, makeshift performance space has been assembled, rather hastily, Carolina Chauffe, in between songs, asks the rapt crowd—me, included among them, sitting alone at a table that is entirely too close to this performance space—how people in the room had heard of their project, Hemlock, given that this evening, as Chauffe has been traveling across the country performing, was their first time playing in the Twin Cities.
I wondered, as the next song began, how I had even heard of Chauffe, and Hemlock.
And it did take a little bit of digging through old emails that would, truthfully, behoove me to delete, but I did, eventually, figure it out.
Long before I thought to follow Chauffe on social media, I was introduced to their work as Hemlock through the short, gorgeous, and spectral track, “Autumn,” which is the opening piece on the compilation Let it Come to You—a collection that had been curated at the end of 2019, with proceeds from the sale of the album going to benefit Clatsop Animal Assistance in Warrenton, Oregon.
“Autumn,” all of two minutes in length, would eventually be re-recorded and go on to find placement on Chauffe’s 2022 Hemlock full-length, Talk Soon—but even within this early iteration of the song, I was immediately transfixed by the honestly unique tone, or quality, of their voice, the skeletal arranging, and overall soothing nature of the song, as it bounces along, with Chauffe gently guiding us into something that, by the end, is extraordinarily hypnotic.
In the years before Talk Soon, though, Chauffe had a large amount of often home recorded music available on their Bandcamp page, and in listening, off and on, throughout 2020, I eventually emailed them, late in the year, to ask about the potential availability of a t-shirt that featured a rabbit design—it was, at the time, still featured within the “Merch” tab on their Bandcamp site, but was listed as sold out.
Chauffe responded at the beginning of 2021 to let me know they were, in fact, sold out and at the time, when it was still very precarious to tour, they were not in a position to print more.
“I appreciate your interest, truly,” Chauffe ended their email to me. “Happy new year. Take care always.”
From the corner by the window at Milkweed Cafe, in Minneapolis, on a Monday evening in late June, where a very temporary, makeshift performance space has been assembled, rather hastily, you could feel that same kind of warmth—the genuine kindness that comes from a person who signs off on an email, to a stranger, with “I appreciate your interest, truly,” and “Take care always,” coming from Chauffe as they spoke with deep, sincere gratitude, in between songs during their set, and then later, in conversations with those in attendance for the performance.
As a truly independent, DIY artist, Chauffe is seemingly always on the road, touring for forever—and never really in “support” of something specific like a new album, but rather, in support of themselves and the passion and intensity they have for music.
Originally released on CD in the spring of 2022, in honor of its second anniversary, more or less, Talk Soon was recently pressed onto vinyl. “Fuck an album cycle,” Chauffe said when talking about the vinyl pressing, how it was available from the merchandise table after the show, and the desire to sustain the life of the album for longer than, perhaps, other artists would.
Even with the second anniversary of Talk Soon culminating in a reissue of the record, and this desire to sustain, a new Hemlock full-length is thankfully imminent—announced, coincidentally, the night I watched from a table that was entirely too close to where Chauffe was performing at Milkweed Cafe in Minneapolis—their sophomore album, 444, is slated for release in October.
Performing a handful of material from Talk Soon, as well as two new songs from the forthcoming album, Chauffe’s set, which was unfortunately cut a little short by the evening’s overall bill (two other musical acts, three short literary readings) running late, also featured material from Amen!—a six-song EP released digitally in April, with CD-R copies available at Hemlock shows.
Hemlock is, from what I can best surmise, whatever Chauffe needs it to be in the moment. Inherently a solo venture, it can also be a band—which is how the project is presented throughout the six songs that are included on Amen!.
Joined by Lindsey Verrill on bass and Kyle Dugger behind the drums, the trio plays through this cycle of very interconnected songs with a palpable and admirable confidence and trust in one another’s capabilities, to create something that walks the line between loose and meticulous, and remains extraordinary in its poignancy and intensity from beginning to end.
Something absolutely fascinating about Chauffe, as a performer—and it is something that is present in places on Talk Soon, but is also something that has been developed, or has grown organically, over the last two years, is their ability to thrive within extremes, and the understanding of which extreme to work within at any moment.
This dynamism between extremes has certainly been present in Chauffe’s earliest work as Hemlock—and if I can name, like, the most effective, or truly memorable place where it is explored, it would be in the chilling and powerful “To Carry,” from Talk Soon, where, at the end of the song, they howl, with a voice that can only be described as otherworldly, “Kiss me where it hurts.”
And it is that moment of focused intensity, and control of their voice, that you do find Chauffe easily wandering into, then shuffling themselves out of, always working to find the balance of tension and release, across the six songs on Amen!.
Spanning a relatively spry 16 minutes total, the intent with Amen! is that it is meant to be consumed as an uninterrupted whole—which means that it is difficult, but not impossible, to remove some of the songs from the context, in the effort enjoy them, on their own, or in this case, offer a little closer analysis to how they unfold independently, and how all of that, then, comes together to create the larger portrait.
Amen!, musically, is not so far removed, sonically, from Chauffe’s work on Talk Soon—though working with a band, and working towards something cyclical, or self-contained like this, does give this collection a slightly different feeling, though Chauffe’s vocal abilities, and the way their range stretches, then contracts, is unmistakable. And, even with the overall stark, or serious nature that the songs here take, in tone, there is still a bit of a playfulness, or at least that looser feeling, in how Chauffe, Dugger, and Verrill interact, musically, with one another.
You can hear that playfulness in the kind of jazzy, rootsy shuffling when Amen! begins, in the at times, rollicking, and in moments, visceral, opening track, “Widest Wing.”
And for as much tension and release Chauffe displays in their voice on “Widest Wing,” the song’s arranging also finds itself in that space rather quickly, swaying and undulating itself into places that are harsh, dissonant, and dark, then back into a space that it a little lighter, or softer in timbre.
Lyrically, “Widest Wing” is, at its core, seemingly about a kind of deep connection with another, though Chauffe lets the words unfold in a fragmented, poetic way—there’s a narrative, or at least imagery that is evocative, and in the way, those words do end up tumbling out into the bed that the music has created to hold it, they are delivered with a very palpable emphasis on specific words, or portions of phrasings.
“Using the backyard bedroom window as a mirror, I see myself truer looking through,” Chauffe begins, when the song, and their voice, is still working in a space that is a little quieter. “A moth circling a lamp that isn’t on—to believe so blindly in the moon,” they continue, before the distance, or volatile nature of the song rushes in, and the narrative becomes a little more personal, or at least depicts a more personal moment.
“When the dog off the leash almost bites me, on the phone with Tommy, I’ll turn around, I’ll walk on home—a close call, I call you close,” they continue. And, because there is an interconnected nature to the songs included on Amen!, the final lines of “Widest Wing” do, in a way, loosely find themselves tying into what is depicted within the second song on the EP, “Good Wind.”
“You teach me how to sew a tote at the kitchen table,” Chauffe recalls. “Turn on the iron, press the seams—you offer up your widest wing,” they continue, and as the song recedes back into the quiet it began with, in a hushed voice, they deliver a line that, because I am such an earnest individual, resonated deeply with me during my very first listen.
“You’ve changed my life more than I knew anybody could.”
“I think you’re a good friend,” Chauffe begins, then, on “Good Wind.” “I could learn something from you.”
In its tone, and in the instrumentation used, “Good Wind” is similar in a number of ways to “Widest Wing,” with the looseness that the band plays with, though here, there is a much more noticeable kind of darkness, or something unsettling, that casts a shadow as the music gathers its momentum—the percussion is still lightly brushed out and shuffled, and there is a ramshackle feeling to how Chuaffe strums at the acoustic guitar. And it, like “Widest Wing,” is a place where they continue to show the growth in how they use their voice—bending, stretching, and constricting it, through inhaling and exhaling, allowing nearly every word to land just a little differently. Sometimes sharp, or dissonant. Other times, with a tenderness.
The lyrical similarities, though, between “Widest Wing,” and “Good Wind,” do kind of stop after the opening line, and Chauffe takes them into an inherently starker, and much more fragmented, ambiguous direction. “You catch me in your butterfly net,” they howl. “When I hit the curb.”
The song ends with the music swelling, and crashing, abrasively, with Chauffe stating, not prophetically, but with a confidence, “I think it’s a good wind gonna blow,” before the song, like the one before it, does work its way down from the explosive heights it has climbed, and finds resolve.
*
There is, of course, a twang, or drawl, that you can hear in Carolina Chauffe’s voice—sometimes, they play into it more than in other instances. And it is something that comes out, in their voice, and the overall feeling on “Bones,” the song that arrives at Amen!’s halfway point. Lyrically, it is still poetic, yes, but it is also surprising in how direct, and how personal it is, and how it depicts a very particular kind of sadness in the human experience.
The twang is apparent from very early on, but after the first line, something that did surprise me about “Bones” is that, yes, the band does find its way into an actual head nodding groove—if you were looking for something a little less inaccessible to a casual listen, this is the one, for sure—and there is something very sultry about the lyrics, and how they sound put against this, for the moment, quiet, shuffling rhythm.
“I saw it on the floor,” Chauffe begins. “The way you look at them—you don’t look at me no more.”
“Take me out to the back, put me down real nice and easy,” they continue. “Just like that. Do you know the kind of evil little thing that love can do?,” Chauffe asks, before continuing to explore a kind of sensuality that is not always present in their writing. “Tonight, I wanna fuck someone that I love—someone who loves me.”
Like the songs prior, even with “Bones” beginning with just a slightly different tone, Chauffe and her bandmates, seemingly with ease, or as a second nature, do find their way into the kind of borderline unhinged arranging, simply in how it explores the dynamics between a more hushed, and delicate sound, with things that are dissonant and snarling.
Amen!’s second half is, comparatively, slightly less approachable, just in terms of a casual or passive listen, or if anything, is a little more experimental. It ends with two songs that are structured where one seamlessly blends right into the other—the fleeting, 90 second, and honestly a little soulful, “Eleanor,” followed by the EP’s closing track—the nearly instrumental, soothing and yet unnerving “Prayer.”
And I guess the convergence, really, of both extremes that Chauffe does so well, and wishes to musical exist in, occurs in “Be/Long,” which arrives just after the halfway point. Structurally, it is the freest, or loosest song in this collection—tumbling around in such a way that does make it sound like it is, if not entirely, at least slightly improvised in the moment that the tape was rolling, and in the way the vocals are delivered, Chauffe is the most visceral here in how they contort their voice, singing in a hush, then later, through gritted teeth—the hush coming in delicate, or tender line from near the beginning of the song: “Hearing you play from the other room,” Chauffe begins. “Surrender into missing you. I’ve missed you for so long—my guitar strings sing your song as borders fall across another ocean.”
The visceral, then, comes later, as “Be/Long” continues to stir itself into an unstable frenzy. “I pray we live to see the fall of every goddamn wasted wall,” they exclaim, before literally barking the lines, “And I chose you as family—now, a glow from deep inside of me is ripe for the reclaiming.”
When an album works its way toward a conclusion, I do often find that I am looking for some kind of resolve, or some kind of answers that it might offer up to us, as listeners—or, if there is a sense of hope, or optimism, even if the songs within the album are, overall, bleak, or steeped in sadness or sorrow.
Because of the fragmented, poetic ambiguity in Chauffe’s writing on Amen!, and the self-contained nature or the songs included, it is the kind of listen that, in the end, is not concerned with a resolve. Not exactly. It’s not exactly bleak, nor is it overflowing with a sense of hope. Like the instrumentation itself, and Chauffe’s vocal performance, the feeling that one is left with as Amen! finds its way to a conclusion is one that walks the line, or oscillates, and thrives, in the spaces in between one extreme to the other.
In the way it explores a kind of folksy, loose aesthetic, with something more dissonant and confrontational, the thing that I am left with, though, from Amen!, is the continued glimpse into the warmth and sincerity that Carolina Chauffe exhibited from their performance on a Monday night in a makeshift space in a cafe in a city they’d never been, or in an email exchange with a total stranger asking about a shirt—the warmth, and sincerity that you can feel from the final line of “Be/Long”—“May we land somewhere soft.”
* * * *
Two years ago, I had taken a job that I quickly realized that I did not like—or, rather, was not going to be very sustainable for me. Which, has, unfortunately become somewhat of a common theme in my life since then.
At the time, I was working at a doggy daycare and boarding—the dogs, themselves, were mostly fun (there were, of course, the few, that were aggressive, or more difficult to work with), but it was the the organization itself, the management, and ultimately inconsiderate co-workers that did make it a job that I was not going to last very long at.
When I think about this time, I think about the early mornings I spent trying to complete my tasks, with efficiency, and about the music I would find myself regularly listening to. And for as much as I can remember, and for as often as I remember details, about things, that are of little to no consequence, I am not sure how I was introduced to, or found myself listening to so much “indie folk” in the spring and into the early summer of 2022—like Sadurn’s delicate, masterful debut full-length, Radiator, or the dense, sprawling, introspective self-titled album from Florist.
Or, the debut EP from Iris Garrison’s project Bloomsday—Place to Land.
My relationship with time, and how it feels, and how it moves, has changed a lot over the last couple of years. Perhaps yours has as well. Because, in reflecting on the last two years—the spring and summer when I listened to a lot of very gentle indie-folk while working at a job I knew I was ultimately not going to last very long at (for the record, this did turn out the be the case), until now, so much has happened in the world at large, yes, and for me personally, certainly, but there are also moments where it doesn’t really feel like two calendar years have elapsed.
Two years moves both quickly, and it doesn’t.
It is both a long time, and it is not.
It is the amount of time where you can grow, or change, or evolve. And I tell you all of that to tell you this—that in the time since Garrison released Place to Land, and now, shortly after the arrival of Bloomsday’s debut full-length, Heart of The Artichoke, you can hear the amount of growth, or evolution, or maybe maturation, in how Bloomsday as a band sound, and Garrison, specifically, as a vocalist and songwriter, have grown.
Heart of The Artichoke isn’t different enough in tone, or in scope, to sound like the work of a completely different artist, but it is certainly the work of someone who has spent the last two years growing into their talents more, and becoming a much more confident front person and lyricist. It wasn’t present on every track on Place to Land, but I associate the songs on that EP with a kind of dreamy, or shimmery quality—that hasn’t been replaced completely, now, but there is a much more organic and robust quality to how Garrison and the assemblage of musicians on Heart play together—a lot sharper, and tighter in sound, when all of the elements do inevitably swell, and come together with a kind of meticulous, exciting beauty.
*
In its structure, and how it balances its material, Heart of The Artichoke is an album that knows when to swing—and swing big, in terms of songs that are just enormous in scope, and what they wish to convey; in turn, it also knows when to point things inward, and not retreat into a hush, or a whisper, but to show restraint, and work within a sound that is a little softer, or more gentle—one sound, or style of song, is not more successful than the other, and the very obvious takeaway from the album, as a whole, is that Bloomsday is an incredibly dynamic band, and that Garrison is an intelligent and thoughtful songwriter.
The titular artichoke is, of course, a metaphor—explored in what more or less serves as the title track, which is placed toward the end of the album’s first side.
“Artichoke” is one of the gentler songs on the album—it begins with a low ripple from a synthesizer before a pensively strummed acoustic guitar comes tumbling in, gathering a little more momentum with each hit of the strings. There is a very delicate swirling nature to “Artichoke”—the percussion here helps with that. It’s a little rumbly, and a little clattering, creating just a very low, kind of shuffling rhythm that the other elements to the song drift along the top of.
The music itself here, as it is in a lot of places, is overflowing with beauty. “Artichoke,” when all the pieces fall together, is gorgeous and sounds like it would feel right at home used in a poignant or stirring moment in a coming-of-age film—and, so, yes, there is beauty to hear, but it is Garrison’s lyrics, and the vivid images they conjure, that makes Heart of The Artichoke such an important and fascinating record.
It is not the first place it is referenced (there is also a similar line in the stunning open track) but Garrison, in “Artichoke,” makes note of an article of clothing, left behind by someone, and the scent you are not able to remove from it—something that can be seen as both a bad and a good thing. “Found your favorite t-shirt in the back of the car,” they begin quietly. “Smelled like fire and bug spray, and your face in a flashlight in the dark.”
And, yes, of course, the metaphor of the artichoke—“Peel back all your layers, get you to your core. The heart of the artichoke keeps me wanting more,” is certainly effective in describing a want, or a desire, for another person. But. It is the surprising mixture of imagery in those opening lines, where Garrison ruminates on a t-shirt, left behind, and what it actually holds, that I think is much more impactful, and worth sitting with.
This kind of give and take within the album continues into the second half, with the fragile, haunting, and somber “Carefully,” and then the twangy “Bumper Sticker”—the former, focused much more on the lyrics, or the feeling that Garrison wishes to convey with them, and the latter, seemingly more concerned with creating an overall vibe.
Something that I noticed—perhaps even during my initial listens to Heart of The Artichoke, when it was an album that I was anticipating the release of, and was playing, primarily for leisure, or enjoyment, rather than analysis, but picked up on more the longer I sat with it, were the aforementioned “big swings,” in terms of a song comes together so effortlessly and at times, is rather stunning. “Bumper Sticker” is on the cusp of being one of those moments—it’s pensive, but not pensive enough that it is, like, inherently sad. But it is pointed inward, at its core, even though musically, Garrison leads the band through these big, country and western-tinged whooshes that give the song a slow, swaying kind of sensation and do eventually find themselves in a bit of a groove—albeit a little bit of a reserved one.
It isn’t really a “call and response,” but in my notes on Heart of The Artichoke, I was uncertain how else to describe the way Garrison’s assembled the lyrics and their delivery—maybe a question and answer, though it isn’t really that, either. But there is a strength, singing in a higher register for part of the verse before pulling their voice down low, almost to a mumble, creating a truly interesting contrast with the next line—and it is almost always that the inward-turned line is far more compelling, or poignant. “I’ve been looking for a good time in a bad place,” they sing, early in the song.
Then, later, it is the whole verse that is noteworthy in the imagery and feelings it conjures: “Do you feel shameless on the interstate? Bumper sticker for the band guy in his home state. I’lll stay hidden on the inside to avoid this rage.”
“Carefully,” with only the acoustic guitar string plucks underneath Garrison’s delicate vocals, moves like a waltz in its tempo—and is unique amongst the other nine songs on the album because it is recorded and mixed to sound like we are right there in the room as the song is unfolding. So fragile, in every element, that at times it sounds like it is going to shatter, as the guitar bounces with intention, and Garrison’s voice works itself into a tender, vulnerable space.
That tenderness, and an opening up of oneself, is at the heart of their writing on “Carefully,” as is a kind of of want for someone to have something easier, or better than you had—a type of very genuine support that is, quite honestly, extremely touching.
“Carefully,” assures Garrison as the song begins. “Don’t let them see. Don’t let your guard down.” Then, later on, “Make them laugh—carefully. You’ll find a way to hide your needs in cups of tea, in empty beer cans.”
“Write some words down, carefully,” they continue. “You’ll cross them out, they’ll never be.”
Garrison, throughout a bulk of “Carefully,” lets the word tumble out into the spaces where they fit the best within the waltzing rhythm, but it is in what, I suppose, serves as the chorus to the song, where they let their voice rise just a little higher, and become a slightly brittle, and sustain the words out, into a different melody—“And oh, back on the shelf, collecting dust, fading out,” they sing, bittersweetly, because there is, of course, a bittersweet, or kind of longing, that ripples throughout “Carefully,” does seemingly evaporate, or shift, with the little bit of hope offered in the final line.
“Oh, see how you’ve grown. In your window, on your bedside—there is a home.”
*
In the amount of time that I have spent with Heart of The Artichoke, I have come to understand that it is an album that does’t work its best when you listen to it uninterrupted, but there is so much thought put into these songs, and there is a lot of dynamics across the album's 10 tracks that it is a truly enjoyable, accessible, and very comforting kind of experience to hear from beginning to end.
But, it is not so self-contained that you cannot pick certain songs to favor, or return to, or perhaps find more, overall, from listening to just those.
And it is, of course, the more robust, or more well assembled songs that do ultimately become the most memorable from Heart of The Artichoke—the moments where everything comes together with perfection, and the band is working towards something with such a satisfying payoff in the end.
The closest Bloomsday gets to writing, like, a “pop song,” comes near the end of the album, on “Object Permanence,” which is the most anthemic and certainly the least melancholic song on Heart of The Artichoke—almost rollicking in how bouncy and shuffling the rhythm is, with these huge strums of the acoustic guitar, and a chorus that knows exactly what it’s doing when it ascends to something powerful that you want to roll the windows down and sing along with.
And maybe it is the reason that they were released as advance singles from the album—one roughly six months ahead of the album’s arrival, the other accompanying the announcement of Heart of The Artichoke—but both the slow-burning, opening track, “Where I End And You Begin,” and the angsty, downcast, and cathartic “Dollar Slice,” are really some of the finest songs on the record—with “Dollar Slice” being among one of the most compelling songs of the year.
“Where I End” begins quietly, with the strum of the acoustic guitar, before the rest of the instruments do literally come tumbling into place—and the thing is, when it happens, it is kind of expected, honestly. Or anticipated. But it works. Like it is a kind of brief flicker of beauty that is really breathtaking, and it happens so soon in the song—as are the moments when the music swells, and swirls, and is graced with a surprisingly buzzy, noisy guitar solo near the conclusion.
And, yes, of course, a song like “Where I End And You Begin” does really rely on all of its elements—arguably, here, the instrumentation and how the song floats in slow motion, almost become slightly more of a focus over Garrison’s lyrics. But. It is this song where we do first catch the glimpse of just how vivid those lyrics can be, and the kind of portrait that can be created in just a few lines.
“Saw your car from college broken down the highway shoulder,” Garrison begins. “Saw your eyes flashing in my rearview mirror. Smell your perfume here—I used to smell it everywhere” they continue. “Never got it out of that sweater,” they confess, before the lyrics, then, take a somewhat starker turn. “I hope that you’re doing better.”
And that’s it. Aside from the titular phrase. Those are the lyrics, and the way that there is so much conjured, in terms of time, and place, and memory, in those lines is just masterful.
The narrative created, just a few songs later, on the explosive, at times snarling, “Dollar Slice,” is just as memorable and stirring, and the song’s arranging is truly the most exciting on the record.
“Dollar Slice,” from the moment it begins, is a song that knows exactly what it is doing, and it knows when to build itself up, or flash its teeth in a surprising moment of ferocity, when to recede into someplace pensive, and reflective, or when to blur the lines between all of those. It is the song that, of all the moments on Heart of The Artichoke, where Bloomsday, as a band, sound the best, or the tightest, just with what they accomplish here, and how they accomplish it by piling on and then pulling away certain elements as the song keeps unfolding.
And it is one of the few moments where Garrison raises their voice—the snarl that comes after just a little bit of a build-up, howling, “I saw god buying a dollar slice,” and then taking a huge breath in, and then exhaling, “He said won’t you try to let go and live your life,” they continue.
“Instead of wasting it—wasting time.”
The press release for Heart of The Artichoke mentions that “Dollar Slice” is not a retelling, so much, but a bit of a contemporary reflection, or response, to Joan Osborne’s 1995 song, “One of Us.” Garrison is quoted saying they are not religious, but that they are into the notion of a higher power, seeing them and, as they put it, their “bullshit, and calling it out.”
The conceit of “Dollar Slice” is revealed within the first verse—the opening lines alone, adjacent to the song’s larger narrative, are simply astounding in the small observation, and comparison made—“Morning routine, eggs over easy—just how you like me, ‘cause you’re always running.”
“What were you dreaming,” Garrison asks of this off-stage character. “You were kicking and whisper screaming while you were sleeping,” they continue, with the song itself doing something genuinely interesting, as a second vocal track, repeating the first line, just slightly after, and a little slower, comes in, as Garrison’s voice drops down to a literal whisper on the delivery of that line.
It is, again, a moment when Bloomsday, as a group, really go for it, and the way this song, and all of its moving parts, and elements, continues to come together, does make it something to behold.
“Dollar Slice,” in how it treads the line with a mournful twang, and the distorted, guitar-driven, slacked “indie-rock” sound, serves as the perfect vessel for lyrics that do have a larger, or more thoughtful point to them—it moves in a kind of intentional slow motion, and with the moments where it builds, does become a song that is catchy (if slow motion indie rock can be catchy), and it doesn’t distract, exactly, from Garrison’s writing—of being called out, in between the moments of daily minutiae, but it does successfully disguise them enough so that it does take a few listens for the gravity to really hit you.
Heart of The Artichoke is an impressive album—let alone an impressive full-length debut from a relatively new project. Full of heart, and depth, and put together with tightness, tact, and a kind of welcoming, warm sound, it isn’t an album that asks questions, so much, in the end, nor does it want answers in return directly—but it does ask, or more than anything, really, it wishes us to give consideration. To look deeper, or closer, into our connections with others, and at the smaller moments, or in the details that others may overlook—like the scent of someone left behind on an article of clothing, and the stories there, waiting to be told.
* * * *
And this was—as the idea of writing something that would, ultimately, be substantial in length, but would be slightly more concise looks at a couple of different, somewhat similar in tone, releases that had come out over the last few months—originally going to cover three albums.
Two would have been a handful, certainly, and I think in the past, when I had been more apt to put together a kind of “round up” style analysis, two gave me plenty to think about, and write about. Three, before I sat down and began writing, seemed like a lot. Like maybe too much. Not that I would be in over my head with trying to take notes on three albums, and then collect my thoughts and arrange it on the page so it.
No.
But it just seemed like a big ask for the reader.
Deciding to include a fourth record into this analysis—it was not a last minute decision, but the notion to do so did come after I had already started critically listening, and writing notes.
And here’s the thing. It is a little hard for me to remember how flimsy of a connection I tried to make, in the past, when I was so inclined to write something that did focus on more than one album—in the last two I would have completed, in the summer of 2019, I know that the through line was a little stronger, being that it was about two albums by rappers who had loose associations to the same (and mostly defunct) New York hip hop collective; the other that I am thinking of—it was more or a stretch, and was done under the generic blanket of, they are both “rock bands.”
And in heading into this, regardless of if it was going to be about three or four different releases from the last few months, the generic blanket, or attempt to make a connection, was going to be about the similarities in sound, or tone—all, more or less, indie-folk adjacent.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—the longer I have spent combing over these albums, and learning more about the artists responsible for them, there are more connections than just a similarity in sound.
The most apparent example is Hannah Pruzinksy’s contributions to Bloomsday’s Heart of The Artichoke.
And for as often as I complain about how quickly the internet moves, or, rather, how slowly I move, and how it is difficult at times for me to remember how, or through who, I was introduced to a new artist, I can recall with accuracy how I was pointed in the direction of Raquel Denis.
It would have been near the beginning of May, when Denis released the song “Mother,” as a single, and I saw it mentioned in an Instagram story from Danielle Durack—a singer and songwriter who, now living in Nashville, is originally from Phoenix, Arizona, and the stark, black and white photograph of a bird fluttering above a nest, serving as the cover for the single, as well as Durack’s kind, enthusiastic, and encouraging words, caught my attention.
Digitally self-released at the end of June, with a cassette copies slated to be available in the autumn, and a vinyl pressing in yet to be determined future, Matrilineal is, in a word, breathtaking. It is the kind of album so delicate, and haunting, and stunning, that it does, regularly, stop you in your tracks—at least it did, for me, throughout my early listens, because I simply could not believe the weight of what I was hearing.
In the item description on her Bandcamp page, Denis refers to the album as “Songs of healing my maternal line.” Spread across eight tracks, it is a collection of songs that is absolutely unflinching in the difficult, often sorrowful places that it will take you, and for as much anguish as you may hear in Denis’ voice, at times, it is so utterly captivating, that you are unable to turn away from it, the further she pulls you in.
*
On a number of the songs on Matrilineal, Denis is joined by a band—but even when there are other instruments involved, the more robust arranging does not detract from how organic, and how intimate of an album this is. There are places, even early on in the record, where the level of intimacy is like a whispered secret that you are dying to share with another. A kind of fragile, very open, and very honest experience—and there is also a closeness you can hear when these songs do begin to gain momentum. They all smolder—some of them inherently sadder, or starker, than others, but when the warmth of an electric piano, or the shuffling of percussion comes in, there is this kind of naturalistic, “in the room,” or very “in the moment” kind of feeling that gently takes over.
Denis asks a lot of questions throughout Matrilineal—many of which, like the ones she poses in the album’s opening track, “Soft,” are unanswered. Though, maybe even in the ask, there is an expectation that there is no easy answer to be provided in return. “Can you be soft,” she asks, her voice delicate, and honestly very youthful sounding in its cadence. Then, later, asking a little more difficult of a question—“Can you be known?”
“Soft” begins with the sound of not silence, exactly, if that makes sense, but the hiss coming from a guitar amplifier, then the quiver of a tremolo pedal on the sound of the carefully plucked electric guitar strings.
Musically, a lot truthfully happens in a short amount of time as “Soft” quietly begins—there is a folksy quality to the finger-picked style of electric guitar playing. It moves quickly, and with confidence, but there’s also just the slightest hesitation, or nervousness, about perhaps getting too far ahead of oneself within the rhythm. And as Denis’ voice comes drifting in, a second guitar appears, adding a dreamier texture within the space, with the measured, restrained percussion following shortly thereafter.
The last element to arrive, or at least the last element that you can really hear clearly within the mix, is the warm and soothing twinkling sounds of the keyboard—a sound that does remove it slightly from the dreamier place it oscillates in for just a moment, and, like Denis and the band she plays with on Matrilineal do in a number of places, seemingly transcend the idea of genre, or style. There, of course, is the strong indie folk or folk adjacent feeling, but there are places, like when all of these different textures begin swirling around on “Soft,” where it becomes more than that—soulful, melancholic, gorgeous.
The instrumentation, and the loose yet calculated structure of “Soft” is certainly impressive, and there is great detail that you can hear in how the recording was engineered to truly give it that organic, naturalistic, and intimate feeling, but as it is in literally every song on the album, it is the enormous range, and the unique timbre of Denis’ voice that make these songs as impactful as they are.
“Soft,” musically, tumbles and rises, but never really ascends beyond a certain point—the ascension is saved for Denis’ voice, which rises higher and higher, and is just simply astounding in how powerful it is, and the kind of control and precision she has with her range, which she continues to demonstrate on the slow, slinking “Outlier.”
Like “Soft,” “Outlier,” too, begins with the shivering effect on the electric guitar, and ambient sound of the amp hiss—recorded with such intention that you can hear the scraping sound of Denis’ fingers sliding up the neck of the guitar as they find their next position on the strings.
“Outlier” also, rather quickly, transcends any kind of clear genre descriptor, because as it slinks, the delicate momentum it gathers gives it a slow groove that it is quite easy for us, as listeners, to fold ourselves into and nod our head along in time to it, when the plucks of the bass strings resonate through, the second, again again, dreamier, or hazier “lead” kind of guitar drifts in, and finally the gentle thudding of the drum kit.
“No one knows the answers,” Denis sings, in the song’s opening line, which is broken up and sustained, with the tender quality of her voice stretching certain syllables so they reach much farther over the shuffling and tumbling instrumentation below her.
In the slow groove that it finds itself in, “Outlier” does wander away from the indie folk adjacent aesthetic, and ends up, as it stretches across seven minutes, in a place that is a bluesier and a little soulful, and ultimately hypnotic, in terms of its musical structure, but also in the soothing quality, and slow delivery and reputation of Denis’ voice—which does, even with as soothing as it can be, become a little dissonant, or at least a little less gentle when she sings the titular phrase—“I’d rather be an outlier,” she repeats, as a chorus of sorts, then ads, “Than be your liar.”
And something that I noticed during one of my earliest listenings of Matrilineal, was that, yes, some of the song running times do ask for your patience—the penultimate “Water Tower Fire” is nine minutes and change,” but the songs themselves, and the way they are crafted with such intention, and Denis’ phrase turns, are all elements that do reveal more themselves to you gradually. It is an immediate album in the sense that I was completely invested in it before “Soft” had even finished, but the gravity, and importance of these songs is a hand that is not played right away. It takes time to pick out certain, stunning lines, like “No one can pray the things I need to say,” from “Outlier,” or to sit with some of the larger things it inquires about, like “Can you be known,” even if you have no real answer to provide.
*
With as delicate as the album is, at least at first, with Denis’ voice, and the restraint that the band is playing with, she isn’t afraid to turn things into a slightly harsher, or at least a much more scathing place of lamentations and regrets, which is where we follow her on “Treasure.”
Denis can do anguish well—there is an otherworldly and terrifying place she takes us, with her voice alone, much later on in the album, on “Mother,” but on “Treasure,” it is less about anguish, and more about a kind of sorrow that comes from reflecting—but she presents this sorrow with such startling ferocity.
“Treasure,” in its structure, is just Denis alone, playing a cavernous-sounding acoustic guitar—again, the album’s meticulous attention to engineering and production makes this song sound like it is truly happening in the same room you are sitting in. You can hear the natural reverb around her, and the creaking sound of the chair she’s sitting on while playing.
In the kind of honest, or threadbare arrangement with only the acoustic guitar that accompanies Denis on “Treasure,” there of course is the honesty—unflinching, really—in her writing here. Here, too, as she did on the previous two songs on Matrilineal, stretches and bends her words and the syllables to cover just as much of the song as each of them needs to, letting her voice not so much operate independent of a melody, but there is certainly a freeness in how she sings, which, even in how stark, and somber, this album can be, that kind of looseness is remarkable and refreshing to hear.
“Treasure,” in its writing, doesn’t exactly come from a place of feeling mortified, but it is the sound of someone working through true regret in real-time. “Trying for my touch,” she laments. “You wanted to be so much,” before continuing, a line later, “You know you fucked up. And I don’t want to talk…”
Denis, though, does manage to keep a sense of humor, as biting as it ends up being, or attempts to laugh at herself as much as she is able to in her continued reflecting. “No one knows myself, better than a touch—sometimes that means we need to fuck…a little embarrassed that I let you fuck,” she confesses. “If you don’t see me as treasure in a field—then what the fuck?”
There, of course, is an anger, or resentment in much of the song, but there is also a humility to them, simply because Denis’ voice is so delicate, and gorgeous, even when she is ruminating on this attempted, and ultimately disastrous, connection with another.
From both “Treasure,” and “Soft,” being released in 2023 as advance singles, and the stunning, harrowing “Mother,” arriving maybe a month before the album’s release, I am under the impression that writing and recording Matrilineal was not a laborious process exactly but one that was long-gestating and if anything a labor of love. Per a post on Instagram announcing the album’s imminent release, Denis mentions work on the album was completed across 2021 and 2022—a long-gestating process in a sense, with things moving along, much like the music within the album does, at a slower, very deliberate pace.
With the time spent working on the album, there are moments where you can get the feeling that the confidence in musicianship, or at least the ambition, from Denis and her band, started to grow—a moment you can hear that, very clearly, is at the halfway point, on “Magic.”
There is of course a darkness that shrouds a majority of Matrilineal, even though the album, in the end, is meant to implicate a kind of hope, or a letting go—sonically, a darker, more ominous tone does find itself at the center of “Magic.” I hesitate to say there is a feeling of menace, at the beginning, as the electric guitars explore a much more hollow, lower tone, but it is unsettling, and surprising in just how downcast of an aesthetic is conjured within the first few notes—it’s offset, of course, by Denis’ soothing, haunting vocal range, and it does find resolution, pretty quickly, once the additional instruments come in.
Something that is rather surprising, once “Magic” finds is way, is that it does sound, in terms of production, different—not bad different, but like, it sounds a lot bigger in its scope. Not like there is more at stake here for Denis. But it is like, just a lot more robust sounding, and a little glossier, in comparison to the other tunes on the album—certainly “Soft” and “Outlier.”
That sound—the size, or the gloss, I suppose then mirrors the heights that “Magic” finds itself soaring to. Across nearly seven minutes, Denis is in it for the long game, in how gradual of a build-up there is. The arranging itself—moody, eerie synths, big piano chords, very sharp and crisp drumming, and what can be best described as post-rock style noodling on a second guitar, never really gets away, exactly, from the band, but it does, over that long span, eventually grow to a toppling kind of height—a torrential cacophony that is unlike anything on the record, before quickly finding its way into a moody conclusion.
And as the song builds, it is, of course, a terrible, desperate pleading that takes over from Denis’ lyrics, and her voice—still incredibly beautiful, she does truly belt it out, soaring high above the noisy finale, making something that is, even in the bleakness that id does depict, honestly triumphant.
“Magic” is about the feeling, overall, of the song—the music, the lyrics, Denis’ voice, and the pleading that builds, of her saying, “You can’t take that away,” as it heads into its climatic final moments. But, there is a line that, as the song is finding its way, and working toward this propulsion, really resonated, just in what it brings to mind, and how it lingered.
“You can’t believe all of the things I want to be today.”
*
And there are, of course, so many moments on Matrilineal that stun—the moments that, the more I listened, the more I did understand it was an important album from a new artist that was not only asking for your attention, but demanding that you give it.
Placed after the halfway point, it is the song “Mother” that is the most stunning of all—the one that, in how devastating and sorrowful it is, and in what it depicts, and how it is depicted, is the one that I was simply unable completely shake the specter of, long after I had finished listening.
“Mother,” both is and is not a kind of anthesis to a song like “Treasure”—it is not, in the sense that they explore two very different things; but they are, because of how they work from opposite ends of extremes. Another song where Denis is unaccompanied by other instruments, save for the sound of the electric guitar—here, rather than providing something gentle and floating in the layer underneath her voice, the sound is crunchy and distorted, snarling, with the strums growing in intensity to mirror the power and intention of her voice, and the raw anguish it is conveying throughout.
Opening with an eerie and captivating wordless melody, the power that “Mother” has really hangs on both the fragmented and discomfortingly vivid lyrics, and the place from deep within which Denis sings from. In her post about the song on Instagram, when it was released as a single in May, Denis describes it as a song that requires your time and is not a “passive listen.” She is right, of course—I mean the whole album is not a passive listen by any means, but this is the moment that she does stop time, and hold your attention. It is, as you can potentially surmise from the title, about, and dedicated to her mother—firmly connecting itself to the name of the record, and to the conceit of this collection of songs.
Songs of healing her maternal line.
In dedicating the song to her mother, Denis says both that no one on earth who inspires her more, and admits something that I think is important, but also difficult for some to perhaps recognize—that they are a “very imperfect human person, just like the rest of us.”
The images, and phrasing, that Denis uses across “Mother”—visceral and unflinching are words that come to mind, but honestly do not truly describe the experience of hearing the song.
There is a somber, lurching quality to the way Denis’ electric guitar is strummed at first—the distortion is turned up so high that it is audibly crunching as she plays. “Slow burn about her,” Denis observes, and again, pulling the words and syllables so they fit just where they need to within the structure of the song. “Slow burn. That’s my mom.”
“See her through the cracked door—she’s crying, she’s praying, she’s laying prostrate on the floor,” Denis continues, before opening up her voice to bellow, “She’s my mother,” then bringing it back into a solemn place of realization with the line that follows. “And I’m just one of her own.?
I don’t think that the intent behind a song like “Mother” is to truly make the listener uncomfortable, or uneasy—and, perhaps, if you, as a listener, have a different relationship with your mother. Or your experience with your mother, during your formative years, was one that you were not unpacking, as you are able, in therapy, maybe it is a song that does not leave you with what I can only describe an emotional hangover.
But. I am not that person. “Mother,” for as stunning of a song as it objectively is, creates a space that does make me uneasy, and uncomfortable. And for as displeasurable as that sounds, it is something that I appreciate about Denis’ artistry. That it can be that moving, and create that kind of a reaction from someone.
There is a horrible feeling of tension that is struck across the song, the more time we spend in it, in the line that is walked between the enormous swells of emotion, and then when Denis pulls things back in to barely above a whisper. “No one suffers—no one cries the way I hear her cry,” she explains, before confessing, “Afraid to be just like her,” which, even in the more positive, or optimistic light that Denis casts her mother in, near the end of the song, by sharing the things her mother taught her, is the line that is, potentially, the most resonant—or, the one that made me feel the most seen, or understood.
Because in all of these albums that I have spent time with, and analytically considered, there are of course the glimmers of myself that I catch in them, even if that has not been the focus, or the conceit of how I have chosen to write about them. It is the deeply personal nature in all of them that drew me to listen in the first place, and has kept me attentive as spring turned into summer.
“Afraid to be just like her,” Denis says, without fear. I am afraid too, you see. Often. When I see unflattering reflections of my own parents—my mother, specifically, in how I act. Or what I think. Or how I feel.
The resolve in a song like “Mother,” with the difficult things it works through is reflecting, as one can, on what is positive, or has been helpful—when Denis sings of the things her mother taught her. And the resolve, however unspoken, is not an acceptance of those fears you may end up being just like someone, regardless of how you may wish not to be, but rather a reconciling with that as a part of the human condition.
Because we are all very imperfect in the end.
* * * *
There was a time when all of this was much less complicated.
Before these pieces reached the length that they often do. And before I did really start inserting myself as a character, and seeing so much of myself within the albums I opt to analyze and write about. Even in an attempt to do something inherently a little less complicated, in the end, both literally and figuratively, you end up becoming yourself along the way.
There is of course something unique and distinctive about each of these releases—certainly distinctive for me to have spent so much time with them over the last few months, but there are also of course the similarities in sound or in tone. Because for as harsh or as dissonant as some moments, across each, can become, there is such a hush, and a quiet, that offers up what I find I often need, and perhaps you, as well, are in need—calm and reassurance.
No Glory is out now to download or purchase on cassette (the vinyl is sold out) from Mtn. Laurel.
Amen! is available physically at Hemlock shows, and as a download from Double Yolk.
Heart of The Artichoke is out now on LP, CD, and cassette, and to download, via Bayonet.
Matrilineal is currently available as a download from Raquel Denis' Bandcamp page.
Comments
Post a Comment