What a wild, wacky week it was.
At times, it felt almost as if we were stuck inside a giant pinball machine. A rocket-like spring wheezed at the start, lights blared above and a succession of ding-ding-dings echoed around us. A metallic ball ricocheted near. And just when we thought we were in the clear, the rocket-like spring wheezed again, another flurry of ding-ding-dings erupted, and another metallic ball zoomed toward our heads.
And somewhere in there, as I’ve done time and again since its July 14th release, I turned to Lucy Rose’s Something’s Changing to calm my fraying nerves. The folk-flavored album is chock-full of tuneful musings on life and love, at turns retro and utterly modern. Here’s one highlight: “Floral Dresses,” which – due to the Staves lending their wondrous harmonies to it – introduced me to her in March…
The video adds heft to the bittersweet rumination, which is about breaking free of familial expectations, by showing the universality of the experience.
She’d already turned many ears prior to that pairing, I should mention. So much so that, in 2016, she undertook a fan-booked tour of Central and South America, where her music has never been physically released. She played 33 gigs over eight weeks, minimized expenses by staying with fans and their families, and learned a lot about herself in the process. This is the mini-documentary she made about the experience:
Another highlight of the album is “Second Chances,” about rising above self-doubt:
“Soak It Up” is yet another of the set’s stand-out tracks; and though it’s likely just me, I hear echoes of Pink Floyd at its start:
My favorite track, however, is the one I featured on July 1st: “No Good at All.” It’s positively intoxicating. (I’m not alone. Diane just said, while I was playing the video, “I love this song!”)
As I’ve mused before, “popular culture” – as such – long ago splintered into a thousand niches, and is likely beyond repair; and for those of us of a certain vintage, aka middle-aged (or older), it sometimes seems easier to lean on the tried-and-true rather than seek out new sounds. Who has the time to weed through Spotify or Apple Music playlists?! (If I had, maybe I’d have discovered Lucy Rose sooner.) Yet singer-songwriters old and new still sing and write, and make the world a better place one song at a time. This week, as over the past few weeks, Lucy Rose’s Something’s Changing did just that for me. I highly recommend it.
(I should mention that she announced this week that she’ll be opening for Paul Weller when he tours the States this fall. Should be one helluva double bill. And given than I bought my tickets for the Philly show when they went on sale in May, I’m now doubly psyched.)
For additional perspectives on the album, here are reviews from the Guardian, Paste magazine and AllMusic.
The Old Grey Cat 
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