Less an album and more an audio diary, this is perhaps my most favourite live album. Scratchy, tactile, warm. Doors close; people laugh;... there is chatter in the background. Acoustic guitar — immaculate. Lyrics that take your soul and render it in poetry. Staggering, also, how Adrianne just drops fragments of songs that she's kept for years and years, and lo and behold they turn out to be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard (until the next one). There is a togetherness to it all — it's close and comforting, and yet it places you in the world. Like quietly listening to the voices of those you love ring from somewhere else in the house. Her music reminds you that you're a part of something so much bigger, and I remain in its thrall.
PS I have also figured out the chords to 'ripples', if you need them. show more
This is old Justin Vernon, originally released just after 'Silent Signs' by Deyarmond Edison and just prior to 'For Emma, Forever Ago' by... Bon Iver. And so, it has a similar middle-of-the-woods feel. Like you're in the room with him, sitting on the wooden floorboards in the candle-lit dark, doing nothing but listening. At times raucous, at times filled with unbearable longing, this one has carried me through the brightest and darkest of times
To me, it speaks of the desire to set out into the world and find yourself without the burdens of the past, only to discover that, for a while at least, you are comprised of nothing but what you've left behind. To deny this is a kind of death. "I have buried you / in every place I've been," he sings on "song for a lover - long ago" to a lone guitar. But: "you keep ending up / in my shaking hands"...
As a side note, for the longest time this existed for me as a file in my Google Drive. I can't recall from where or when I downloaded it, only that the songs have always lived in my mind with the most dubious of sound quality. I didn't realise until last year that he'd finally formally released it. To hear it again, now crystal clear, has been gorgeous, like watching an old film restored in 4K. Beautiful, though a part of me will always love most those lo-fi, grainy versions embedded deep in the heart of who I once was show more
The bedroom pop guitar, the harshness of the beat, the repetition of the riffs, Antwon's voice rough and echoey over it — all... sounds like leaning out of a car driving through a town you knew when you were a different person and thought life would be different; it's summer and you're wondering when everything fell apart
In the track "Changes", there is an inevitability to the grief in Antwon's forceful delivery and the constancy of the guitar and the beat: "you seemed so sad, I felt the same / I knew you felt a way that I couldn't change", all delivered as facts. No illusory hopes, no wishing it away, no positive spin. Only an acknowledgement of the sadness and its gravity — a recognition poignant in itself because sometimes all we want is just to be heard, to be seen
Feels dumb to say (because surely it's the point of music) but I love tracks in which the instrumentation and production add a vital layer to the story being told that couldn't be expressed any other way
Also — would die for a full length collab between Antwon and Kerry McCoy show more