New York, NY (Top40 Charts) You don't have to believe in anything mystical to feel the molecules around you shift just a little when you listen to Kris Delmhorst. Her songs shapeshift like breath turning to mist on a cold, clear night; the inner made visible. With Long Day in the
Milky Way, her eighth album, Delmhorst takes a surefooted stride forward. Lush with layered vocals and immersive instrumentation, it finds the gifted lyricist at the height of her craft and working with a strong sense of purpose. Kris Delmhorst will release Long Day in the
Milky Way on August 14 via CEN / The Orchard.
World-weary but hopeful, the songwriter responds to a time of global anxiety with a missive straight from the chest. Delmhorst invites the listener to look both out and in, to take in the full kaleidoscope of life's contradictions - frustration, transcendence, heartbreak, love - and to locate the grace within the struggle, the beauty in the dark.
"No shame in the long game, look around and see that time is all we got," she sings in "Wind's Gonna Find a Way," the album-opener out today full of subtle swagger, as background vocals and strings coalesce into a weather system all their own - sinuous cloud formations and bright glints of sunlight. "Slow hands in the shadowlands, patient fingers working at the patient knots." In its tagline, the song recommends adopting the persistence of the wind: "Keep on pushing and you'll find a way through."
Called "bold and brilliant" by the
Boston Globe and "transcendent" by the LA Times, Delmhorst is a veteran of the indie Americana world, with vivid songwriting, soulful delivery, and adventurous arrangements that stretch the limits of genre. She's been compared to artists as various as Anaïs Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, and Juana Molina - though she cites Rickie Lee Jones, in all her fearless joy and complexity, as an artistic north star.
Long Day in the
Milky Way marks a surefooted stride forward for Delmhorst: a cohesive distillation of her artistic sensibilities. "I thought a lot about landscape, and about fabric," says Delmhorst of her arrangements. There are few solos on Long Day in the
Milky Way; instead, Delmhorst and her band craft a world out of subtle variations that coalesce into larger patterns. "I was thinking about the variations in a handwoven cloth, or in a forest. It called for collective-minded, flexible, non-ego-driven players."
Writing most of the songs at a retreat in New Hampshire surrounded by a trusted community of fellow songwriters, she designed them with her friends' participation in mind, building in load-bearing vocal parts that define the album's sound. For some tracks, she arranged vocals on the same day the song was written, sitting in a circle with backing vocalists Rose Polenzani, Rose Cousins, and
Annie Lynch on the floor of an old boathouse, giving the record a deeply collaborative feel that's evident from the first note.
"I've always been a solitary writer, but over the years, developing songs with these women has become a treasured creative space," says Delmhorst. "Having them there in the studio let me sing from a place of feeling supported, lifted up. It was so liberating to hear their voices alongside mine in real-time, to not have to carry the song alone."
And that, of course, is what other voices are there for: to lend strength. To take you by the shoulders and remind you to go outside and look at the sky. To form a circle around you, to sit down on the floor, to acknowledge our common struggles. To say: Keep on pushing and you'll find a way through.
