Abbey Blackwell, who’s perhaps best known for playing bass with and for Alvvays, Haley Heynderickx and Cassandra Jenkins, released the second single from her second solo set, Big Big Motion, yesterday. The album, which is slated for release on September 13, is a remarkably fluid set that’s accented by open space, a relaxed pace and the apparition that is time. In short, she explores—to borrow a few phrases from Wallace Stevens—the “blessed rage for order” via “ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.” I’ll have more to say about it next month.
“Next Time,” for its part, is a compact rock tune that plays havoc with the existential concerns surrounding time, memory and identity, and—as if that’s not enough—features a guttural guitar solo, too. In some respects, I hear it as the lament of a hired hand plucking chords in someone’s backing band. “You sure it’s me who you heard?” she asks. “Keeping time’s a little hard, for sure/Did you say we’d meet in town/Or did I mistake you for another sound?” (I love how she flips the script with that last line.) She possesses a plaintive voice, I should mention, that simultaneously glides across and inhabits her lyrics.
The band behind Blackwell includes Ronan Delisle on electric guitar, Stephen Moore on keyboards, and Evan Woodle on drums, while Trevor Spencer provides auxiliary percussion as well as electric guitar.
The Old Grey Cat 
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