The other night, as I often do, I pulled up YouTube on the big-screen TV and clicked play on a recommended offering. Sometimes it’s Rick Beato, Snarky Jay or another “talking head” with a provocative monologue about music or the wider entertainment landscape. Other times, it’s a walk through history via a hackneyed video of some sort, be it about Philadelphia in the 1970s or the rise and fall of shopping malls; the AI narration, recognizable by mispronunciations and elongated mid-sentence pauses, is generally as pitiful as the footage is interesting. More often, however, the recommendations I click on are of Nanci Griffith, Maria McKee, Jackson Browne, or any of our many favorites, some of recent vintage but most from our shared long ago. One low-res clip leads to the next, and before you know it a 1991 Shawn Colvin appearance on Austin City Limits is unleashing a wealth of warm memories.
Diane and I were fans by then, though we’d yet to see her live. I don’t know why. I discovered her half a decade earlier, while deejaying a folk show on Penn State’s student-run radio station; she was featured on several of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine compilations that I played. But that slice of the past is less important to me now than this: Who from today would fit within the parameters of those yesterdays? To my ears, as evidenced by this blog, there are a slew of talented songsmiths—both folk-flavored and country-tinged—who would, could and should be on the radars of Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin fans, not to mention Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams aficionados. Malin Pettersen, for example. Her crystalline vocals on Just When I Thought I Didn’t Know What to Say, a three-song EP culled from Wildflower outtakes, remind me of Colvin’s—as do the songs themselves. They’re folk-flavored yet country-tinged, the kind of sonic treats that were once the backbone of AAA radio—and which, if stripped to their core, would work just as well on acoustic guitar.
On Instagram, by the way, Pettersen described the EP with a series of questions: “Did you ever love someone who didn’t love you back? Give your heart away to someone who threw it away? Do you ever wonder what happened to that friend and why you don’t talk anymore? And were you ever so totally in love with someone who did give you love back and made you feel utterly weak in the knees?” Since its release last week, I’ve played it at the end of the recent and forthcoming albums and EPs that I play every morning, some of which I’ll feature in these pages and others of which I’ll skip. In short, Just When I Thought I Didn’t Know What to Say is akin to both the sunrise and sunset, tinged with hope and regret, yet somehow quells internal storms and strife. My only criticism (and it’s not a fair one): The EP’s too short.
The Old Grey Cat 