Certain songs find me floating like a feather on the gusts of melody, with the upswings and downshifts tempered by tempo. Sometimes I drift too high, other times I plunge low, with the breeze catching me just before I set off for the clouds or crash onto the ground. Such is the case with pretty much every Bella White tune I’ve ever encountered, with “False Start”—the latest single from her forthcoming album, A Sign in the Weather—being yet another example.
The song is simultaneously slack and taut, sounding a bit like a refugee from the 1970s, when Neil Young, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris (among others) plucked gold from dashed dreams and broken hearts. In short: A drum kicks in. A strummed guitar follows. White’s voice enters the fray, as does a full band. It’s folk-rock in form, Americana in practice, and resonates like a tuning fork vibrating at a C or G frequency. The lyrics find her moving in circles, peering through a crack in the window that’s grown wide, and hoping that the haze she sees isn’t as foreboding as it seems. Is it a false start? Matters of the heart are never black and white, but live in the gray—as does this song. In combination with White’s last few singles, “Little Things” and “Dream Song,” it bodes well for A Sign in the Weather.
The album can be preordered from Bandcamp or—as I discovered this morning—via the Rounder store, where a signed placard can be had along with the LP.
The Old Grey Cat 