Songs of the Week 2026: Take 4

Neil Morton

FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK

Lucky River: Kris Delmhorst (featuring Anaïs Mitchell)

We somehow managed to let a wonderful collection of songs from 2025 escape our appreciation. Belated acknowledgement has arrived for Boston-based Kris Delmhorst and the gorgeous Lucky River, our Song of the Week at herecomesthesong.com, from her 10th album, Ghosts In The Garden.

Among a series of vocal collaborations, Lucky River flows even more beautifully in the harmonic company of Anaïs Mitchell. The latter must have loved joining in on those shared lines; the track’s dreamy vibe is reminiscent of one of her own wistful contributions to Bonny Light Horseman.

Delmhorst, originally from Brooklyn, New York, and now settled in Western Massachusetts and a regular on the Boston folk circuit, was inspired by a songwriting prompt. ‘It called to mind this image of someone fishing by the side of the road. I have family in Wisconsin and that’s a very common sight there. People will just hang out, feed their families, and sit by the river all day,’ she told Worcester Magazine. ‘It turned into a portrait of somebody who has gotten left behind by their own life, kicked into the margins.’

Heron on the bank as thin as a door

He don’t even notice me anymore

I been moving along, I been sleeping rough

A little here and there but it’s never enough

A little here and there but it’s never enough

A little here and there

I had a little place by the package store

It’s not my place anymore

Wasn’t much but suited me fine

Every single day a little further behind

Every single day a little further behind

Every single day

Cars roll by on 53

Places to go, they don’t see me

Blew a little more cold rain today

I thought I wanted April but I guess I wanted May

Thought I wanted April but I guess I wanted May

Thought I wanted

Erik Koskinen’s consistently imaginative electric guitar, producer Sam Kassirer’s subtle Wurlitzer, Jeremy Moses Curtis’s warm bass and Ray Rizzo’s restrained percussion cradle Delmhorst’s strong yet vulnerable vocal as she duets with Mitchell, painting a picture of someone stranded in one place, unable to find a way out.

Lucky water, roll away

Lucky sun, call it a day

Lucky rainbow, let your colours show

Lucky river some place to go

Lucky river some place to go

Lucky river

The cast of guest vocalists – Mitchell, Rose Cousins, Anna Tivel, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton, Rachel Baiman, Jabe Beyer and Delmhorst’s husband Jeffrey Foucault – began as a wish list. Delmhorst was driving home from a show and listening to rough recording cuts and imagined different voices accompanying her on most of the tracks. It was a mark of the esteem in which she is held that each of those singers answered the call.

Delmhorst described the album’s theme as ‘the X-ray that makes visible all the invisible presences we have in our lives’. A sense of loss pervades the record but the overarching impression is hopeful and uplifting.

The title track is an homage to her dear drummer friend and collaborator Billy Conway who died in 2021. Foucault honoured Conway on his 2024 album, The Universal Fire, which he called ‘a working wake’. Foucault accompanies his wife on another standout track, Detour, about a ghost mining town visited during a road trip through Montana, made more haunting, Wicked Game-style, by Rich Hinman’s pedal steel.

The impact of climate change, an indictment of our wanton ravaging of nature, is maintained in Age Of Innocence: ‘Paradise was so hard to believe in/ Once we were innocent and unashamed/ Now we’re the only ones to blame/ We didn’t even know we were living in the garden of Eden.’

There are ghosts aplenty, not just in the garden, on this album: lost souls, past mistakes and missed opportunities. It was recorded in Parsonsfield, Maine, at Great Northern Sound, inside an 1800s farmhouse said to be inhabited by its own spectres.

Delmhorst wrote Won’t Be Long during the 2020 global shutdown about ‘the weird, frustrated feeling of being stuck at home and watching so many things go off the rails on our little screens’. She asks: ‘Are you the match or the kerosene? Are you the head or the guillotine?’ She adds: ‘On further inspection maybe there’s no difference at all.’

In the hypnotic Wolves, the last track written before recording began, she stares down mortality as if faced by the eyes of her subject matter and asks: ‘Do you really love the story if you don’t love the end?’

After the release of Ghosts In The Garden, Delmhorst revealed she had recorded another album’s worth of songs that might be unveiled soon. We are still waiting. More bewitching tracks like Lucky River? Lucky us.

---