I’m listening to Lana Nauphal’s recent debut album, Wildland, for the first time this morning. She’s a 20something singer-songwriter from New York City whose evocative songs conjure the sounds that first reverberated through her soul as a young teen—the folk-flavored longings and barbs of Bob Dylan and the other bards of the 1960s and ‘70s, including Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt. I’d wager Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell are in there somewhere, too, as there are moments when she trills like Baez and sings lyrical asides that echo Mitchell’s—but most of all, a discernible Dylan vibe runs through the songs.
Her life story is almost the thing of novels: She was born to Lebanese parents in London, where she attended French schools, and eventually relocated to Washington, D.C., where she majored in English at Georgetown University. Post-graduation, she moved to New York to pursue her dreams and, somewhere between then and now, hooked up with producer Tim Bidwell, who helmed British singer-songwriter Lucy Rose’s wondrous Something’s Changing and No Words Left albums. He does for Wildland what he did with those recordings, aka what David Crosby did with Joni Mitchell on her debut: stay out of the way. Strings and horns float in and out of various songs, but the focus remains on her poetic lyrics and flowing vocals, which possess an emotive undertow.
In short, Wildland chronicles the dying embers of a once-fiery relationship. “Is It Raining in California?” explores the pangs of the distant heart, for instance, of being apart from a loved one even while knowing it’s for the best. “Sure as the Score,” about loving someone who’s unable to shake addiction, explains why, while “Something in the Rain” and “The Sweet Thing” both dig into the aftermath. But the genius of the album is that it moves beyond the down moments. “Oh He Oh My,” about the first blush of a potential crush, is an uptempo, heart-filled delight that springs across the synapses like a frolicking feline.
All of which is to state the obvious: I’m passionate about music.
Yet, in a sense, that admission is but one line in a decades-long song. I’m passionate about writing about music, too, of digging into the grist of the present and past via the works of long-established, new and new-to-me artists. I published my first record review in my college newspaper, penned ripostes for a short-lived national magazine post-college, and launched The Old Grey Cat website on GeoCities in February 1997. I also co-founded a bootleg-centric ‘zine in the late 1990s that died not long after the new millennium, and wrote Fred Mitchell’s TV GUIDE’s Music Guide column when he was on vacation.
When I re-launched The Old Grey Cat on WordPress in July 2014, after a few years of posting to my neighborhood Patch, I was pushing 50 and somewhat conflicted; I was simultaneously awash in nostalgic yearnings and curious about the younger generations then sharing their art. First Aid Kit, Courtney Marie Andrews, Lucy Rose, so many more—they re-energized me in a way my many time-tested favorites couldn’t. What I’ve come to realize is that longing for days that used to be is a purely futile exercise; it’s much more fun to celebrate the days that are. That’s what keeps one young.
Which leads me back to where I began: Lana Nauphal’s Wildland. Its 10 songs track the hurdles and broken hearts almost everyone experiences at some point in life. But all storms eventually clear, and so they do here, with post-relationship analysis and sadness swapped for newfound hope, dreams and possibilities. It’s a wonderful album well worth one’s time.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 
2 thoughts