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A Mushroom Cloud" is a song about the anxiety and fear of nuclear warfare in 1950’s North America. After discovering the song on an old vinyl record, I was struck by how familiar the sentiments felt - this feeling of living in a world that might explode at any moment. Like atomic bombs, the current climate crisis we’re living through is human created chaos, built by politicians and enabled by science. The powerlessness, and fear that comes with that is part of our lives now, and this song encapsulated the emotional experience for me.
"A Mushroom Cloud" was written by Boudleaux Bryant, and has only been recorded by one other artist, Sammy Salvo in 1961. This new version incorporates vibraphone, farfisa, and a heavy drum rhythm that all play off one another to enhance the uneasiness and dread of the subject.
Love & Devotion was inspired by early 60's pop and soul music. I was interested in writing a direct and unadorned love song that interacts with darker musical undertones. A rich string arrangement distorts over the course of the song giving a sense of nostalgia and disintegrating glamour, a nod to mid-century film noir. The video for the song was filmed inside of a biodome - a space that is both beautiful but also unsettling. There's a sense of being protected but also exposed. Singing Love & Devotion inside the dome, surrounded by plants and birds living in an artificial climate, reinforced the sentiment of the song. Sometimes we know what we see is not reality, but even though we know it's artificial and provisional, we can convince ourselves that it's permanent and real.
Silver Screen’ looks at how we are nearly always playing different roles in our lives. Exhilarating ones and exhausting ones, and many in between. How witnessing someone you love playing a certain role is complicated. Knowing the real person who is behind the bravado, and wishing they could just let it go.
‘Golden Dream’ investigates the societal dreams we collectively hold - celebrity, success, purpose. To me, the dream of California holds so much of that - the glamour, the promise, the ‘ideal life’. This song pulls back the veil and speaks of the unspeakables behind those sunny idealistic images.
“I'd wanted to do a cover of 'Rich Girl' for years - there's something about the song that I just love. My bass player wrote the darker, modified bass line and suggested the sparse arrangement. As we experimented with the band, the lyrics took on a darker dystopian meaning, and seemed to re-write themselves for this version. Hall & Oates meet Joan Didion in a big box parking lot.”
“This song is about recognizing one’s insignificance in the greater cosmic order, but not feeling a loss of freedom from that, but finding a prism of beauty in that realization." says Hol.
Over instrumentals that are meditative, super layered, and at times psychedelic, a complex and lyrical poetry invites us to reflect on our collective present moment.
“I chose to release this song because it has intense dynamics and they reflect the daily oscillations between uncomfortable disorder and quiet reflection that I believe we are collectively experiencing around the globe right now. Our lives are suddenly different, and this song tasks us each with finding generosity, kindness, and a lens of beauty in a time when it may be easier to do the opposite.”
Folk tales and fables are weaved through ‘Heading North’ leading the listener through the poignancy of Lorca, the romanticism of Wordsworth, and a thoughtful embracing of the Americana folk tradition.
Woodcutter cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.
Why was I born among mirrors?
The day walks in circles around me,
and the night copies me
in all its stars.
I want to live without seeing myself,
and I will dream that ants
and thistleburrs are my
leaves and my birds.
Recorded in three days on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, ‘Boats’ is a bluegrass inspired collection of songs and poetry. Featuring the mandolin, robust off the cuff harmonies, and the crackle of the wood stove ever present in the background, ‘Boats’ is the earnest offering of a young literary minded songwriter whose tender poetry leads the listener on a nautical journey home.