Songs Of The Week 2025: Take 5
- Neil Morton
- Oct 24
- 24 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK
Keep Me In The Dark: Flock Of Dimes
The wonder of Jenn Wasner’s voice can trick the listener into underplaying the emotional turmoil behind the lyrics. The Life You Save, her third album under the alias Flock Of Dimes, is her proudest solo work. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is the hypnotic Keep Me In The Dark, which she regards as perhaps her finest ever composition.
The Baltimore-born musician describes the shimmering Keep Me in the Dark as a love song, ‘the type of love rooted not in control or selfishness, but grace and acceptance of each other’s mutual imperfections. To heal in a relationship is to learn to see yourself with greater clarity and compassion through the eyes of someone who sees all of your bullshit and loves you anyway’.
If I act like I’m above it
Will my body catch up to my mind?
I’ve said all of the things that I needed to say
But I’m leaving the meaning behind
So I’m dying, trying but I’m getting it wrong
All the meaning of living and the purpose of song
But I never, wanted to hurt anyone
But you can try to keep me in the dark
And you can lie and say you like the cold
And the weather
Turn me around
You see it in me now
I see it in myself, again
She says of the self-produced 12 tracks of The Life You Save: ‘It’s about co-dependency, addiction, and generational trauma, trying to learn how to find peace in the face of others’ suffering. It’s about the loneliness of being trapped between two worlds – the one you came from, and the one you’ve escaped to – and the grief of realising that the only person you can save is yourself.’
Wasner believes it is the best work she has created but also the hardest to make –
‘not necessarily musically – although that was a challenge too – but personally, emotionally, and psychologically’. She adds: ‘This record is not someone else’s story –it is mine. A life spent believing I had escaped, and that I deserved to feel guilty for doing so. A life in which I believed that the right combination of words, actions, effort, and expense could somehow change others’ behaviour. And a life in which blindness to my own patterns caused me to hurt others and prevented me from finding the true love and acceptance I yearned for.’
Unflinching honesty is Wasner’s trademark attribute. The North Carolina-based songwriter, who performs with Andy Stack in the indie-rock duo Wye Oak and has collaborated with Bon Iver and Sylvan Esso, should be more celebrated than she is; perhaps her sometimes bleak subject matter might make her music too introspective for followers of bland pop but intelligent lyrics and sonic beauty, enhanced here by multi-instrumentalist Alan Good Parker’s pedal and lap steel, the synths and keys of Nick Sanborn and Jacob Ungerleider, Caroline Shaw’s violin and Wasner’s own guitar, make a bewitching combination.
The finest song she has written? That is a high bar but maybe with Keep Me In The Dark she has surpassed Awake For The Sunrise from 2021’s Head Of Roses for aching warmth and fierce, cathartic self-analysis. There will be other contenders on The Life You Save among her devotees.
Opening track Afraid establishes the nuanced tone for the whole album: ‘I did not enter this world afraid/ And I refuse to leave it this way… I had to grow, so I grew/ I didn’t mean for it to take me so far gone from you/ I made you scared when I cried/ All I wanted was a witness/ But I know that you tried.’ She calls it ‘a mantra for those who wish to believe that we can transcend the circumstances over which we had no control’.
Wasner’s empathy is a gift she has used to help friends through disturbing times, as disarmingly revealed by Long After Midnight. But it can be a millstone: she has now realised that she must learn to save herself in the process and, as Laura Snapes memorably puts it for Pitchfork, consider abandoning her role in triage.
Wasner sings on Theo: ‘Now I’m trying to tell you how to be/ Afraid that what you do to you/ You’ll do to me.’ Defeat tells of surrender, ‘the moment I finally allowed myself to accept my own powerlessness, and started the process of learning how to step back and allow others to face the consequences of their actions… Three years after I wrote it, I am still working on trying to see myself not as some kind of saviour figure, but just another flawed human being, doing her best’.
Pride, as she declares on another standout track, will be her downfall every time. On I Think I’m God, she accepts she is not. ‘So I tried to give protection/ But I could not set you free/ So the hurt is your misfortune/ But the shame belongs to me.’ On the sparse, Joni-esque Not Yet Free, she seems resigned to absorbing the pain.
Sometimes a rich sound can be reward enough, but Wasner’s scrupulously crafted words are worth our full investment even if it feels we are eavesdropping on private anguish.
She has been conducting a songwriting workshop with School of Song. ‘I’m really enjoying having an excuse to get curious about my own beliefs and processes,' she says, ‘and although speaking them out loud in front of others is an extremely vulnerable feeling, it’s validating to be met with so much appreciation and encouragement.’ If any music student needs guidance on the art of vulnerability, Wasner has written the manual.
Knuckles: The Bros. Landreth (featuring Bonnie Raitt)
The voice of Bonnie Raitt would elevate any song she cares to grace. A perfect example is the new single from The Bros. Landreth, Knuckles, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, a ballad made even more memorable by the Californian’s blues-infused tones.
The Canadian brothers, Joey and Dave Landreth, and their band have released the track early to flag their fourth studio album Dog Ear, due out on November 14. The pair grew up listening to Raitt’s roots music and met her at their home folk festival in Winnipeg. Several years later she recorded their song Made Up Mind, from their acclaimed debut album Let It Lie, and her cover earned a Grammy for best Americana performance in 2023. Its writers shared the accolade.
Now she has joined them on their own record, a full-circle moment the band have craved for years. Guitarist and lead singer Joey feasted on the inspiration of slide players such as Raitt, Duane Allman, Ry Cooder and Little Feat’s Lowell George as a youngster. He doesn’t require any help from Raitt’s guitar skills here, understandably opting for a different style than slide, but her wonderful voice complements his tender tenor.
I can see that you’re hurting
It’s written in your eyes
Like pages in a book
It’s clear your faith is shook
I can read between the lines
Sadness isn’t something
We’re meant to face alone
You think that it protects you
It’s loneliness that gets you
Every single time
Don’t bite your tongue
Say what you mean
Just keep on singing
’Til it sets you free
And don’t pull your punches
Let it rain down on me
Just keep on swaying
’Til your knuckles bleed
Bassist Dave Landreth says of the soulful ballad: ‘Some relationships will stand the test of time, but a lot don’t. Even the good ones can dissolve, fall apart, drift away. Knuckles is about the idea that sometimes being a punching bag is the last kind thing you can do for someone, when it’s easier to let yourself take all the lumps than to ask the other person to face things that they aren’t ready or willing to.’
The brothers wrote the song with drummer Roman Clarke, guitarist and long-time producer Murray Pulver and Keiran Placatka on keys completing the line-up. Raitt was sent the recordings to listen to and asked to choose a track to sing on. Like Raitt, The Bros. Landreth are loved for their raunchy, funky numbers such as the lead single from Dog Ear, I’ll Drive, co-written with Clarke and Jonathan Singleton. But the ballads invariably live longer in the memory of this listener.
Raitt opted for Knuckles and Half Moon Eyes. We will have to wait for the latter to be unveiled but on Knuckles what began as a vehicle for her harmonies turned into a duet. When Joey played the finished article to their parents, they wept as Raitt joined in on the gorgeous chorus (‘Don’t bite your tongue…’) and assumed the lead on the fourth verse.
You make it look so easy
To take it so hard
I hope you know
You can land every blow
I’m throwing this card
And I know we’ve had practice
Saying goodbye
Though it hurts so much
I don’t want to rush
Through it this time
‘Working with Bonnie was an unforgettable experience,’ say the brothers. ‘Her musicianship and instinct elevated this track, and ultimately this album. Seeing her approach this project with so much care and thought was a real privilege. Before Bonnie became part of this track, she was already a huge part of our story. We met her a number of years ago, and what started as admiration turned into a friendship and collaboration that we deeply cherish.’
Dog Ear explores themes of connection, refuge and self-reflection. ‘These songs kept circling back to ideas of refuge – a lighthouse, a shoreline, a dog-eared page to hold your place. They’re tiny prayers for who we want to be for our children, and hopeful ideas about who they might become for their own communities.’
Those early days being ferried to their musician father Wally’s gigs as children – ‘Mom would tuck us into a bassinet and slide us under the bar tables,’ says Dave – planted the seed for a life of touring clubs, theatres and music festivals across North America, the UK, Europe and Australia. Another major tour to promote Dog Ear is planned in the new year.
The band describe the new album as a deeply personal work, a quest for stability in the itinerant life of a touring musician. ‘It’s really about trying to figure out what it means to be a consistent force in the lives of the people you care about.’ Their hope is that it resonates: ‘Maybe something on this record will get stuck in your head, or take root in your heart. Maybe, just maybe it’ll work its way into some little useful corner of your life, in the way that songs sometimes can do.’
The Bros. Landreth’s debut album was released independently in 2013 but re-released two years later after they had signed a major record deal in Nashville. Rolling Stone praised their ‘quiet storm of slide guitar solos, blue notes and three-part harmonies’. Bonnie Raitt’s mind was made up when she caught the band’s set in Winnipeg: ‘I haven’t liked a band as much as The Bros. Landreth in a long time. To hear this kind of funky, southern-style rock played with such originality and soul will knock you out.’
A double knock-out, knuckles bleeding, courtesy of two brothers and their hero.
Rainbow: Lady Nade
And when you find that pot of gold I hope you’ll find something that can’t be sold I’m a rainbow
Bristol singer-songwriter Lady Nade has become a champion for mental health, creating music to touch those on the other side of the microphone, her audience and community. Her latest single, the gentle, joyful Rainbow, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, is an anthem for embracing our emotional selves.
Lady Nade, aka Nadine Gingell, co-wrote the song with Boo Hewerdine after navigating the loss of her grandfather. She talks of the double-edged sword of emotions: ‘feeling relief that he was free from Alzheimer’s and no longer suffering while also experiencing the deep grief and treasuring the positive memories we shared. I’ve also seen this duality through two friends who were fighting cancer together. When one of them unexpectedly passed away, the other was left torn between wanting to keep fighting for their own life and struggling with the loss of the person they had been fighting for.’
Over the delicacy of an acoustic guitar, her alluring mellow voice juxtaposes feelings that would normally conflict...
I need chaos, I need calm
Wanna be alone held in your arms
It might be winter, it might be spring
I need nothing, I want everything
Here I am, I’m a rainbow
Ooh oooh oooh
I feel blue and I see red
I hold the silence of what you never said
I’m your colour in the grey
While you dream
I’ll light your way
Here I am, I’m a rainbow
Ooh oooh oooh
She told Americana UK who premiered the track and video: ‘I wrote Rainbow to express how complex and varied our feelings can be, and the reality of holding opposing emotions at the same time. I wanted to put into words how duality exists within us, how joy and sadness, calm and chaos, comfort and pain can all coexist. The rainbow is a symbol of embracing every one of these emotions and states of being. I wanted to give a voice to those who feel lost when carrying two emotions at once.
‘Rainbow highlights that we are all a full spectrum of colour, and every shade is part of our true selves. For me, it’s about finding peace in accepting that spectrum. Rainbow is about who we are in our inner world. We are complex people, with myriad emotions that make us who we are. This song is about having compassion for our dualities and recognising that we are a rainbow of human personality.’
Lady Nade’s song Willing, the title track of her 2021 album, won Song of the Year at the UK Americana Awards in 2022; the following year she was crowned Artist of the Year. ‘Music has always given me two gifts: the chance to nurture my own wellbeing, and the chance to bring wellbeing into the lives of others. Throughout my career, promoting the positive link between music and wellbeing has been a thread I’ve continued to weave, whether performing in countless cities, festivals, and counties, or working in health settings such as schools, care homes, and community spaces to help break the stigma around mental health.’
The loss of her grandmother was a pivotal moment in her life; she was only 10 and began writing as a form of therapy. ‘I would write her poems and then one day I picked up a flier for songwriting workshops at the venue which is now Bristol Beacon. I didn’t know if I was a songwriter but I had these poems, so I attended the class for the first time and enjoyed it.’
The writing workshops led to singing workshops. She has been performing under the Lady Nade alias since 2012 and is mentoring at workshops herself. She had learned how to play piano and guitar and gained a degree in vocals and performance arts. She dedicated her song Complicated to her grandmother. ‘Songwriting is a tool for expression – a way to channel emotions and experiences into something universal.’
Nade teamed up with Hewerdine last year for a moving duet in honour of a courageous volunteer with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Anna Heslop, who became the first female helm at her North Tyneside station. Anna’s Song was written as part of the BBC 21st Century Folk project. ‘Anna’s story really resonated with me. She found purpose through saving lives at sea, and I realised I had found my purpose through helping others with my songs.’
Just like Rainbow. The sweeping, rich sound on the new single is enhanced by the Halo String Quartet (Lydia Alonso’s cello, Hannah Teasale’s viola and the violins of Olekandra Halkina and Elizaveta Saul) and harmonies from Ferris and Sylvester, with co-producer Archie Sylvester also providing electric guitar and bass. Michael Rendall on keys and drummer Ross Gordon complete the support cast.
But the most distinctive instrument is Lady Nade’s soulful voice, negotiating the smoky depths, impassioned highs and haunting hushes with apparent ease. That gift has been powerfully evident during her current tour celebrating the songs of Nina Simone, one of her guiding lights. One of her rainbows. She recently performed at Bristol Beacon whose stage Simone had graced 60 years ago when it was Colston Hall.
It was her grandfather’s record collection that introduced young Nadine to the pioneering force that was the American jazz-blues singer and civil rights activist. She has a striking photograph of her idol on the wall of her Stokes Croft studio.
‘Nina Simone’s voice and presence were transformative for me,’ she told B24/7. ‘I knew then that I wanted to make music that made people feel something.’ Lady Nade can put a spell of you too.
I Spent All My Money Loving You: Bobby Charles (with Sonny Landreth)
It is difficult to comprehend how a singer of the late Bobby Charles’ quality should have preferred others to deliver his music. His soulful I Spent All My Money Loving You, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, will appear on the Last Record Company’s reissue of an endangered treasure, Last Train To Memphis, a double-CD set first unveiled in 2004 but out of print by the time of Charles’ death at the age of 71 in 2010.
Others covered the track but his rendition, with a little help from eminent friends, cannot be surpassed. The fact that Robert Charles Guidry, the son of a gas company truck driver, was more successful as a songwriter than as a singer was bemoaned by Bob Dylan on his Theme Time Radio Hour. ‘That’s a sin because he’s a hell of a singer. He’s got one of the most melodious voices ever transmuted into a piece of vinyl, matter of fact.’
The November 21 reissue, described as a definitive lifetime statement of music recorded during Charles’ reclusive years, will commit that warm, affecting voice to vinyl at last, as a double album with 16 tracks. The original was put out on CD only. This very personal compilation represents the Louisiana-born artist’s finest work over a period of three decades, stretching effortlessly from Everyday, recorded in 1975, to Don’t Make A Fool Of Yourself, cut in 1997.
The collection, an authentic blend of American roots, country, soul and rock and roll, incorporates collaborations with the countless musicians whose paths he crossed. Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Fats Domino, Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry, Sonny Landreth, Delbert McClinton, Mickey Raphael, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham and Maria Muldaur all sat in on the sessions at various locations, and the effect was invariably magical.
The CD edition of Last Train To Memphis is supplemented by the original 2004, 19-track bonus disc, featuring material from Wish You Were Here Right Now and Secrets of the Heart.
Our blues-infused song choice is memorable on several fronts: the wry lyric, the Louisiana lilt of the vocal, the heavenly horns and Sonny Landreth’s dazzling guitar. At first you might suspect a chauvinist attitude but Shannon McNally’s cover proved that it works perfectly well with the boot on the other foot.
Wined you and dined you, seven nights a week
Bought you diamonds for your fingers, and laid freedom at your feet
I gave you all the precious love, I had inside of me
And we were doing fine, ’til we ran out of wine
I spent all my money tryin’ to please you
Then what’d you do? You just treat me like a fool
After recording 1972’s eponymous album Bobby Charles in Woodstock with Dr John, Ben Keith and Rick Danko and his pals from The Band, Charles slipped back into hibernation in his hometown of Abbeville with songs of the calibre of Small Town Talk for company. But he never stopped writing and recording. By the millennium, Charles had copious recordings, but little recognition in his homeland. His aversion to touring meant that his songs were always better known than the man himself.
We can be grateful for those recordings considering Charles had lost so much when fire raged through his Abbeville home in the mid-90s. Another house, at Holly Beach on the Gulf coast, was later swept away by a hurricane. The singer later joined forces with Jim Bateman and Ben Keith to stitch together this remarkable retrospective.
In the original liner notes, Bateman points out that the album’s chugging title track is a nod to Peter Guralnick’s Elvis Presley biography of the same name. Like Presley, Charles had been mistaken as a black singer by listeners in the 50s. Chess Records were fooled at first too. They hurriedly had to rethink a planned promotional tour of the black ‘chitlin’ circuit’ of African-American venues.
His first single for Chess in 1955, Later, Alligator, was transformed into a hit with its title expanded by Bill Haley & His Comets. The collection also includes versions of (I Don’t Know Why) But I Do, which he penned for Allen Toussaint and Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry, Walking To New Orleans, written for Fats Domino and accompanied by him here, and as a bonus track his own take on The Jealous Kind, covered by so many including his hero Ray Charles and Joe Cocker.
The Guardian’s obituary recalled: ‘Bobby Charles’ life changed for ever when he retuned his parents’ radio set from a local Cajun station to one playing records by Fats Domino. He led a local group, the Cardinals, for whom he wrote a song called Hey Alligator at the age of 14. The song was inspired by an incident at a roadside diner, when his parting shot to a friend – See you later, alligator – inspired another customer to respond with: In a while, crocodile.’
Charles did not play any instruments and couldn’t read music. He would capture his songs by singing them more or less fully formed into an answering machine. He would write down lyrics, with a rough sense of melody, and then ask collaborators to provide chord progressions through trial and error. As Charles recalled: ‘Willie [Nelson] one time said: Well, what is the right chord? And I said: I don’t know, just play all the chords you know, and I’ll tell you when you hit the right one.’
His laidback baritone drawl, described by Uncut magazine as ‘a singular treasure: the stone-baked smoulder of fresh bread with the sleepy essence of summer blossom’, was a major influence on a style of music made by white and black teenagers that came to be known as swamp pop, embracing the country, soul and Cajun traditions of south Louisiana.
Charles’ contribution to the music of his home state was recognised when he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007. But his legacy extends far beyond. Last Train To Memphis, on the vinyl line, is approaching a record store near you. Twenty-one years late. All aboard.
Cons And Clowns: Courtney Marie Andrews
Courtney Marie Andrews’ first music for three years has arrived like a comfort blanket. Her new single, Cons And Clowns, is a beautiful celebration of self-worth and our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. The sound of solace in a volatile world.
Andrews describes the song as ‘an ode to all the artists, outsiders, and shy loved ones you want to see shine.’ The songwriter who rose from Phoenix, Arizona, continues: ‘In this world of growing sameness I wanted to write a love letter of encouragement to anyone who was afraid to be their wildest and weirdest self, especially amid the dark landscape of now.’
It will be a joy, in the dark landscape of now, to hear that beguiling vocal again during her tour of the UK and Europe this and the other side of Christmas. We hope she’ll make room for the songs that bewitched us from the start: Rookie Dreaming, Table For One, Honest Life, May Your Kindess Remain, Rough Around The Edges, I’ve Hurt Worse, If I Told and It Must Be Someone Else’s Fault.
She was that rookie dreaming; now she’s handing out generous advice to today’s rookies. Dreamily.
Don't make yourself small baby, take up space
I always wanna hear what you have to say
Close the curtain, say your confession
My lips are sealed at your discretion
It's a scary world full of cons and clowns
A lot of bad people who will tear you down Not me, no way, I only wanna hear you play
While Cons And Clowns marks her first new release since her 2022 album Loose Future, she has continued to break new ground as a multi-medium artist. Andrews recently published her second collection of poetry, Love Is A Dog That Bites When It’s Scared, and has enjoyed gallery exhibitions of the paintings she regularly offers followers on social media.
Her poetic gifts keep on giving on Cons And Clowns…
Give me one good reason not to speak
Hollywood forever, no wannabes
Show me that song your daddy loved
Ride that bird into the sun…
Lavender, a stranger's garden
Morning breath, kissing on the carpet
Paint your chest to the sound of Debussy
If only you could see the magic I see
Andrews introduces the track serenely on her 12-string acoustic guitar and is joined by drummer Chris Bear of Grizzly Bear, with co-producer Jerry Benhardt contributing bass, high-strung guitar, piano, juno, farfisa and mellotron. A new alt-country album is on the way and this is our first delicious taste.
The Nashville-based Andrews even features flute, an instrument she hadn’t played since childhood, ‘with a desire to embody the unencumbered playfulness of youth’. We are not sure who the cons and clowns are but we can guess. Politicians, naysayers, detractors, purveyors of negativity?
In an interview for Southwest Review about her book of poetry, a feminine perspective on love, Andrews says: ‘With every form of writing I’m always surprised to learn about the depths of human nuance. We can be both heartbroken and in love at once. Understanding human nuance means having compassion. Compassion is love for ourselves and others.
‘I am forever a student of love and its many phases. Romantic love, friend love, family love, and self-love. These are always in practice, always failing or flying. I like to dedicate my time to each art form [music, poetry, painting] in chunks of time so I can truly get into the weeds. The stories are always cross-pollinating even when the medium changes. I love to have many ways of telling the same stories, because with every perspective you learn something new.’
The empathy so beloved by devotees raised on her honesty and vulnerability. A new relatable story-song from Courtney Marie Andrews is always welcome. Give us one good reason not to want to hear her play.
Mockingbird (Unplugged): Larkin Poe
When sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, aka Larkin Poe, embarked on their latest album, Bloom, they were determined to confront their flaws. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is a cutting from Bloom that really grows on you: an acoustic version of opening track Mockingbird that flawlessly displays their vulnerable side.
Larkin Poe, named after a distant ancestor who was a cousin of Edgar Allen Poe, are renowned for their dynamic blend of Southern rock and blues-soaked Americana. On Bloom the Georgia-born sisters delve deep into sensitive, personal narratives for the sequel to their 2022 Grammy-winning album Blood Harmony.
Bloom is being repackaged on October 10 with the bonus of an acoustic companion featuring five unplugged recordings of songs from the original album. Mockingbird (Unplugged) is the first of those five tracks: the full band version on Bloom is brilliant but the quieter reworking lends subtlety to Rebecca’s impassioned vocal and potency to the lyric, one of their most mature. Megan’s lap steel and telepathic harmonies are just as impeccable.
Who was I before
I took it on the chin
Watching a little more
Of me blow away on the wind
I listened to the whispers
Bending out of shape
To fit into a picture
I didn’t even wanna take
Like a mockingbird
Singing a thousands songs
That don’t belong to me
Just to see who’s listening
The song of a mockingbird
Hidden within my palm
The one that’s just for me
But if you listen closely
And get a little bit lucky
You just might hear my melody
My secret melody
Produced and mostly co-written by Megan, Rebecca and her husband Tyler Bryant and recorded at the couple’s studio in Nashville, Bloom explores themes of self-acceptance, regret, acknowledging mistakes and individuality.
‘Mockingbird holds a very special place in our hearts, so when we began planning the acoustic companion we knew this vulnerable piece would be the perfect place to start,’ the duo said. ‘The stripped-back nature of acoustic instruments let us tap into a really beautiful intimacy – letting the lyric cut straight to the heart.
‘We didn’t mess with the bones of the song, just took away a little of the shine from the original and leaned deeply into simplicity. The riffs settled into themselves, like they’d grown up a bit, and we found ourselves connecting with the song in a whole new way. Like sitting down with an old friend and realising the conversation still has a new thing or two to teach you.’ Sound unplugged, truth unvarnished.
In an interview with Chicago-based V13 Media, Rebecca explained the duo’s change of approach for an album they regard as their proudest work: ‘Bloom took us on a journey we didn’t necessarily anticipate making. On past records we have relied upon a device of writing from characters. Being a little younger as songwriters, it was a lot easier for us to create these bullet-proof, braggadocious, badass caricatures of who we are and that serves also as a bit of armour between you and the world. If someone has a poor opinion of a song or something, we’re protected.
‘With this album, I think we made the commitment to dig deeper in a more vulnerable way and specifically as sisters co-write every song on the record together. Then, with a fine-toothed comb, we went through each lyric to ensure that it was representative of our real-life experience.’
Larkin Poe evolved from the Lovell Sisters, a trio until eldest sibling Jessica decided against further touring. In 2010 Rebecca and Megan reinvented themselves in pursuit of a blues-rock sound; the mandolin, fiddle and dobro of their bluegrass days were exchanged for electric and lap steel guitars.
Megan said in a 2023 interview: ‘There’s definitely a different style in which you play lap steel. Dobro is more like you manhandle it, whereas the lap steel just has more sustain naturally. You have to play it with more finesse, because if you dig in, you’re going to get a brittle tone. You need a more gentle touch. I love the vocal quality of the dobro, but the lap steel can sound like an opera singer. It feels like my true voice.’
The mockingbird is known for its mimicry of other birds’ songs. During the pandemic Larkin Poe delighted their Zoom and YouTube audiences with impressive covers and recorded an album of their favourite tracks by other artists, Kindred Spirits. But anyone who has witnessed their electrifying live performances knows they have a distinctive sound of their own. These torchbearers of American roots music continue to doff their hats to the Allman Brothers; we could imagine Tedeschi Trucks Band cooking up a fiery Mockingbird.
Bloom tracks such as the smouldering Easy Love Pt 1, Rebecca’s ode to her Texan partner (‘His truth is better than any book I've ever read’), If God Is A Woman, Little Bit, You Are The River and Pearls, their anti-online vitriol anthem, provide ample testimony. They are sure to mix the heavy and the hushed during their imminent tour of the UK and Europe.
Rebecca told V13: ‘Whoever thought that we’d be thankful for Zoom? We’ve been able to build a career, outside of the industry, by having our record label, producing our records, and writing our songs, because we’re able to find our fans on social media and people who are a little bit left of centre like us and who appreciate our records.’
She prays the album will have the effect of making the listener feel a little less alone. ‘I do feel that Megan and I got even closer through sharing some of these vulnerable stories with each other. I hope people will find a piece of their own experience in the songs.’
I patchworked myself together
Strung a fence across the plains
Tried to tame it all for better
But some wilds you just can’t claim
If beauty’s in the eye
I'm gonna be mindful where I look
I wanna get a bird’s eye from the sky
Of every chance I took
When Rebecca sings in the chorus about us hearing her secret melody, it is a celebration of self. A secret no longer.
Only Lucky: Maia Sharp
We’ve all experienced it: the frustration and anxiety when trapped in a traffic jam for what seems like hours. Then the guilt that strikes as we discover the reason: someone has been badly hurt or worse in an accident. Maia Sharp, the Los Angeles-born songwriter now based in Nashville, paints the wider picture so eloquently on her 10th solo album, Tomboy. Only Lucky, single No3, is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
I try to be there when I say I will
But that ain’t happening tonight
Caught on the one highway, I’m still
In a snake of brake lights
Fed up, put out ’til it’s my turn to pass
Slowly rolling by the metal and glass
I was tired, I was hungry
Now I’m only feeling lucky
Somebody just lost somebody
The beautifully delivered lines feature in our second choice from Tomboy following Is That What Love Does. Elegantly phrased, highly relatable ballads are her stock in trade. Sharp uses the fatality in the song to reassess her outlook on life, reminding herself to be positive, to be thankful, to focus on the important and not the trivial.
The only child of anthropologist Sharon Bays and Grammy-winning songwriter Randy Sharp, who plays steel guitar on the track, explained in an interview with Glide Magazine: ‘I flew out to California and helped my parents move here. There were a lot of highway miles. There were two particular times of driving, driving, driving, when I found myself in a very long traffic jam that went on for hours. There were people getting out of their car, looking around. The line of cars was so long that we couldn’t see the source, so everyone was trying to be patient, but eventually there was crankiness. When I’m hungry, I kind of lose it. I start to question all my life choices. Then you eventually roll up on the reason for the line of cars, and both times, it was clearly a fatal accident. That snapped me back into the reality of how seriously lucky I am. I started to take a note or two about it.
‘But that’s the small lens of what inspired the song. The sort of wide-angle lens of human experience is something that I think I’ve been able to expand and use more often in daily life because of the work that I get to do with Songwriting With Soldiers [a non-profit project that pairs veterans, first responders and law enforcement with professional songwriters to create music about shared experiences]. That’s really changed my viewpoint toward everything. I think that’s why I don’t shake off disturbing things and try not to access them again. The veterans and first responders who I work with have done things and seen things I hope I will never have to see.’
I’m no good at going nowhere
I become someone I don’t care for
It takes the sound of a siren
To keep my idling engine from sparking a war
The reel of white dashes will start up again
When it does, remind me to remember when
I was only feeling lucky
Only feeling lucky
Sharp’s 2021 album Mercy Rising navigated the breakdown of a 20-year marriage; Reckless Thoughts two years later looked back at that tumultuous period. The relationship is referred to in Only Lucky (‘Free and falling in the great unknown/ Brought back by the red and blue lights and the orange cones’) and elsewhere on Tomboy but she seems to be finally at peace in this celebration of self-worth.
The 54-year-old multi-instrumentalist, self-producing in her home studio and laying down the tracks before inviting guest players on board, adopted an innovative approach for the album, experimenting with a mini synth called the OP-1 Field. ‘It’s the size of your forearm. It’s crazy! I’m using maybe two per cent of what it’s capable of, and I was already overwhelmed by it. I went down some rabbit holes, but found some really beautiful sonic palettes.’
The whole project started with percussion in mind. ‘I didn’t want the same instrumentation that I had on the last two albums. So I built up enough of the framework of each song and tried to find all the signature themes, and play all the same instruments that I was playing here, but more percussively. I tried to play the guitar parts with more of an obvious syncopation. I would hit the face of the guitar. I would take a handheld beanbag I have, and I would hit it on a book a bunch of times. I have a brush for a drum set, and I would hit that on the table. Little things like that to show where I wanted the rhythm to hit, and where I wanted the accent to be.’
Sharp didn’t favour a traditional drum kit sound. The percussionist Eric Darken, whose home is filled with countless instruments from around the world, was her first port of call to refine those homespun sonic flourishes. You can hear them from the start of So Lucky. Will Honaker’s bass, Sarah Holbrook’s strings, Sharp’s piano and the choral outro are delightful ingredients too. ‘Eric is awesome, someone I met on the Art Garfunkel project years ago. He’s on eight of the 10 songs, so he’s driving it. He hopped on the train, and made it a bigger, heavier train.’
That heavier train is a joyous journey. Enjoy the bluesy inflections reminiscent of her hero Bonnie Raitt on the gorgeous, horn-rich Edge Of The Weatherline (‘I never thought much of nostalgia/ But I’m a sucker for an 80s song/ One that can’t be about you/ That piece of the sky is almost gone’), Is That What Love Does and Any Other Way. Those were writing collaborations with Emily West, May Erlewine, Sarah Holbrook and Shannon LaBrie. But we keep coming back to Only Lucky, all Sharp’s own work. We are the lucky ones.
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