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22° Haloâs Lily of the Valley is a collection of songs written by Philly-based songwriter Will Kennedy during his wife Kateâs treatment for a very rare brain cancer. For full transparency, Will and Kate are close friends of mine â Kateâs treatment was a tremendous weight on my chest, and the news of her cancer going dormant was one of the high points of recent years for me. This album hit me hard as hell knowing the people behind it. But the more I listen, the more I marvel at the specificity and universality of what Will achieved here.
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What makes Lily of the Valley such a remarkable album is the graceful confidence Kennedy presents these delicately intimate moments with. Itâs incredibly difficult to write confident, commanding songs about such immense uncertainty. My jaw would drop at the sheer chutzpah of the recurring lead guitar on album opener âBird Sanctuaryâ â it sounds like This Heat playing Thin Lizzy! And these are somehow the first notes we hear to set the stage for Kennedyâs recollections of some of the most precious, intimate moments of his relationship? Itâs incredible.Â
This propulsive feeling sustains throughout the album. âOrioles at Duskâ is anthemic and climactic in an almost literal drive-into-the-sunset sense, and the closing, titular track could throw a crowd makes me want to beat the air with my fists. That an immense tenderness can remain at the forefront of songs with such electric energy, rather than something masked by the music itself, is a big part of what makes this album such a wonder.Â
I hate to use a word like âjuxtapositionâ but it really is this juxtaposition that got under my skin the first time I heard this album and has kept me coming back for 3-5 listens per week since then. If I heard this album without knowing the backstory, without paying attention to the lyrics or knowing Will or Kate, I would still place it as a new high point in the jangle pop canon. Itâs how effortlessly Kennedy can get you to sing along with a song about the terror of watching the person you love most endure chemo that makes this a truly transcendent record.Â
The lyrics are bracingly beautiful and generously specific. The songs sometimes take on a stream of consciousness quality, as if Kennedy is remembering moments both painful and uplifting in the same thought and listing them out as they arrive to him. The moments where Kate accompanies him vocally are among the most moving I heard this year. Kennedy has an uncanny ability to shed off self-consciousness in his music without ever demanding the listenerâs attention. He is beautifully articulating a truth too deeply, painfully human to present as anything other than that; the truth.
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This album is fantastic. Iâve been listening to it a lot over the past month. Thereâs a lightness to the album but having read the backstory of the album and how much of it was inspired by Will Kennedyâs wife, Kate Schneider, getting brain cancer, it also feels very on brand for me. #sadsongsforlife
Dec 15, 2024
craaaaaazy question to ask me specifically because now I will never shut the fuck up
I first came into contact with this album in 2022 or 2023 because its final and titular track was featured in the end credits of an episode of Girls. It immediately became one of my all-time favorites. Both gut-wrenching and hopeful, the song's narrator reminisces on a previous emotionally dark time for them, a time when they were grieving and trying to hold onto things they couldn't keep (underweight, in the street, hot with grief). The hope in this song, which takes the breath out of my lungs, lies in both the crucial past tense of these feelings and in the final lines, 'get well soon, get well soon / I was once just like you.' This has become a sort of mantra for me. Tucek takes something you would see on a kitschy greeting card and turns it into a plea for recovery.
Unfortunately, it took me months to sit down and actually listen to the full album in late winter 2024. It happened very much by accident. I was itching to hear something new and thought, well, at some point I should check out the rest of this artist's work, considering this is one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time. I never expected it to be such a work. I figured someone else would've sang its praises by now if it was going to change my life (which is why I adore this ask, because I think we all have an album like this, or at least we all should). The albums contains stories of grief, regret, dissatisfaction, bad fathers, and ultimately Moving On with a capital M. The track order is perfection. My other favorite song from this album is The Fireman. Somehow it is able to invoke in me feelings I've never experienced as someone whose father was not an absent asshole. The Doctor is a beautiful song about wanting to surgically excise the negative aspects of us that we get from our parents. Things Left Behind is great for thinking about death. Wooden has a perfect guitar solo.
This album is unique, fleshed-out metaphors with mostly a handful of acoustic instruments and an excellent voice. I would change nothing about it. I plan on tattooing the cover on my body because I want it to be a permanent part of my skin.
I might have to write more on this. Transcendent album. if you like Weyes Blood, Angel Olson, Aimee Mann, you will enjoy this. If grief is as constant to you as breathing you will enjoy this. If you're mad at your dad you will enjoy this.
Get well soon (and I mean it)! xoxo
Oct 22, 2024
December is such a tragically dead month for new releases that itâs a rare gift to get an album this fucking good this late in the year. My friend Marcos sent me a link to Heavy Metal out of the blue a few days after it was released â I donât always listen to what he sends me, and he knows that, but Iâm so glad I went into this with a clear mind and open heart. Itâs been ages since a first listen of an album hit me this hard.
Lyrically Heavy Metal feels like what I always wanted from Dan Bejar but never quite got, and musically it almost feels like John Cale tried to rerecord Paris 1919 from memory with a single microphone and a cracked Ableton rip. Or something like that? Mostly, it feels like a wholly original statement that canât be contained, like someone finally letting go of any inhibition and confessing every private insecurity without fear. His lyrics teeter from darkly hilarious (âlike Brian Jones I was born to swimâ) to bizarrely visceral romanticism (âyou were born to break my big hairy football arms/like clean windows kill birdsâ) while regularly returning to the ultimate questions life has to offer: love, desire, purpose, God, you name it. Itâs self deprecating without being self indulgent and immensely wise without ever feeling like an intellectual exercise.
Itâs an album that feels like too rich of a body of work to even properly engage with on the first several listens. Winterâs emotionality is so deep, so personal and so bizarre that it becomes universal â so relatable yet so exaggerated and disjointed that it borders on psychological horror. Iâm going to be picking up on new things within these songs for a long time to come, and I suspect this album will stand out to me as one of the absolute best when I look back at the year.Â
Dec 30, 2024
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