Esther Rose & Twain

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ESTHER ROSE

Everything clicks on Safe to Run, the fourth album from singer, songwriter and perpetual searcher Esther Rose. It’s the quiet culmination of years spent fully immersed in a developing artistry, and presents Rose’s always vividly detailed emotional scenes with new levels of clarity and control. As with previous work, her songwriting transfigures the chaos and uncertainty of a life in progress, but here she sharpens the pop elements and attaches unshakably catchy hooks to even the darkest stretches of the journey.

After spending her formative years in Michigan, Rose relocated to New Orleans and got her start in music there while awash in the unparalleled energy of the city’s scene. Over the course of her first three records, an infatuation with traditional country gradually evolved into a more distinctive style and increasingly personal material.

Rose’s music traced her changes as she moved through stages, studios, and home addresses, and she eventually left NOLA for New Mexico where the two year writing process for Safe to Run unfolded. Making the transition to this new environment after spending the better part of a decade building a life somewhere else demanded looking around and taking stock. All the heaviness, sweetness, levity, and self-discovery that had led up to that point began funneling into new songs that moved slower in order to dig deeper, taking on the intricate hues of a desert horizon as they came together.

TWAIN

“There is nothing remarkable about my life that is necessary to know in order to appreciate the songs,” says Matthew Davidson of Twain. He describes the project as “a modern folk-opera of indefinite length consisting of songs and images from my life, a self-caricature of the musician and writer Matthew Davidson.”

Twain made his label debut with Rare Feeling in 2017. The album was aptly hailed by NPR as “at once human and otherworldly,” by Consequence of Sound as “devastating, delicate, meditative,” and by Uproxx as “cosmic folk, bright and sparkling, but with all the caterwauling and rough bits that the most stoic traditionalist might desire.”

Following the beloved release, Twain played Newport Folk Festival and toured alongside artists including Buck Meek, Langhorne Slim, and Courtney Marie Andrews. Davidson is a former member of The Low Anthem and Spirit Family Reunion and a contributor to Big Thief, whose latest album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You features Davidson’s distinct contributions on six songs.

Of the the most recent Twain album title Noon, Davidson explains, “Noon is where I am, more-or-less, in my natural life span and in my creative life span. I picture noon being at the very bottom of a bowl, the resting point of a pendulum. Not the apex of an arc, or the crest of a hill.

Looking back from this point in my life, I can see all of the hurt and confusion I’ve helped create on the way to my own noon. To borrow a phrase from Elena Ferrante: I don't have any sympathy for the person I was then.  Arriving at noon for the first time in my life, I sense everything reversing and the possibility to change and cure and heal is real for the first time.

This album is a prayer from noon for the rest of the day. The song “The Magician” is about that. The song “The Priestess” is about an agent who helps with that. The fact that the music I’ve made has put literal gas in the literal tank is a fact that I never take for granted. It feels like magic to me, the closest thing I’ve figured out to practicing magic.”