First Impressions: I'm With Her
Going track-by-track through 'Wild and Clear Blue'
I completely missed the release date for the new album from one of my favorite groups. I’m With Her’s Wild and Clear Blue dropped on May 9, and I finally got an hour alone with it this morning. It’s a stunner—not surprising.
If you don’t know this group, they’re a total folk world supergroup. Sarah Jarosz has had an incredible solo career as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist since she was a teenager and has many Grammy Awards to prove it. Sara Watkins started playing as the fiddle-toting third of Nickel Creek when she was barely even into double digits. And Aoife O’Donovan rose to prominence as the frontwoman for the band Crooked Still, at least 20 years ago if not longer. Together, they’re a harmony-driven powerhouse trio, and I don’t use the cliché “powerhouse” lightly.
Because each of these women have very busy, full, notable careers as solo artists and in other collaborations, this is only their second full-length album since 2018. Honestly, I’ll take whatever they offer.
I should note, before I share my first thoughts on the disc, that I didn’t realize the great Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, Muzz, Down Home Souls) had anything to do with this until I was done listening. Somehow that explains a bit of the witchy vibe, although I’m guessing that’s at least ninety-eight percent Aoife and the two Sara(h)s.
And now, let’s go in.
“Ancient Light”: Gosh this song is a masterpiece. Right out of the gate. Sarah Jarosz is singing the lead. The song is anchored on that old folk trope “Long time comin’ / Long time gone,” but it’s unleashed in a really expansive way. They’re using an AAB/CCD rhyme scheme that lands like stones skipping across the top of a river. Watkins comes in with an early fiddle solo that trips up the rhythm and spins us around before setting us down another path. A little teaser of instrumental parkour. The three singers use their voices as tools to pull the harmony wide—a clearing we can see in the distance. That we’re walking toward the whole time. A little more of that ancient light with every note. Then suddenly Watkins is dropping some old-timey chops and then it’s back to the voices and she steps back to become more rhythm section. Harmonies rise like so many fireflies. Good lord. I feel like I don’t even need a whole album. Just this song, forever. But wait! There’s more.
“Wild and Clear Blue”: Aoife to the front. Here’s what I love about Aoife O’Donovan’s skill set: If you listen closely at all, you can tell she’s spent a lot of time listening to Joni Mitchell. You can tell she has serious bluegrass chops and also jazz vocal skills. By which I mean, she understands that her voice is as much an instrument as is her guitar. It is part of the band, rather than the leader of the band. She lets her lyrics have their own rhythm and the instruments and vocals shape themselves around that rhythm. And, if you stop peering so close, none of this matters, because her songs are just damn pretty. All of that is happening here, including some twinkly arpeggios in the background, which drive home the wild and clear and blue of it all. The tune sunsets with Watkins bowing a note that sounds almost like guitar feedback.
“Sisters of the Night Watch”: Okay, now it’s starting to feel really witchy, in the best way. They must have doubled the vocals for the intro on this one. No way that’s just three vocals. Sara Watkins is singing, with a Janette Napolitano vibe, if Concrete Blonde had been a folk band. (Damn, how great would they have been!) “Sisters I’m not sure where I’m goin / but to rest here with you, I am relieved.” I dig it.
“Different Rocks, Different Hills”: My wife and I just finished watching that new Tina Fey series, The Four Seasons, and this song feels like it could have played in the finale. If you know, you know. Aoife is back in the front with a lament that feels like the story of a struggling marriage. Or maybe two people struggling within a good marriage. Channeling Sisyphus the harmony tells us: “It’s hard, it’s hard / when you got two people pushing different rocks up two different hills.” This one is painful AF. A lament to life on the road when your family’s back home. It’s a quick little bit of heartache, though, making way for …
“Standing on the Fault Line”: Talk about being far from home. This one strikes me as an ode on Southern California. Sara Watkins, of course, was born and raised there, coming up through the LA bluegrass scene with her brother Sean and their buddy Chris Thile. It’s easy to guess this rumination came during the fires, but honestly it could have come anytime. Southern California is a beautiful, magnetic, weirdass place located in a place that, let’s just say, is unlikely to fare well as the climate continues to change. But, even if you don’t have any feelings about the state of California, this one resonates. It feels like we’re all standing on the fault line right now, eh?
“Mother Eagle (Sing Me Alive)”: I appreciate that these three rotate lead vocals without making it feel like a “songwriters in the round” vibe. Groups with more than one person who can take the lead vocals can sometimes feel like they’re playing song tennis, but these gals somehow rise above that. This one, they’re all singing the whole thing. And though the instrumentation (especially Jarosz’s solo) is spectacular, the song could stand with vocals only. Lyrically, they’ve gone full coven. More please.
“Only Daughter”: This is a beautiful tune about aging parents, aging self. Sitting on a dock at night. Sarah Jarosz is singing lead, with her breathy alto feeling like a fog on the water. But I’m stuck on the fact that she somehow knows that the bird singing is a purple martin. My wife and I recently binged that show The Residence, which made me look at birds more closely for a minute. I have to wonder if Jarosz is a birder. Of course I had to look it up, and found this sentence from its Wikipedia entry particularly appropriate to this song, considering the subject matter: “When approaching their nesting site, they will dive from the sky at great speeds with their wings tucked, just like the peregrine falcon does when hunting smaller birds.” Cool.
“Find My Way to You”: Aha. Here it is. Until now, stylistically, this album has betrayed almost none of these gals’ bluegrass bona fides. I mean, they’re there, just not so pronounced. This is one for the Merlefest crowd, without losing the rest of us. “I got a nose like a dog in the woods and love like a mountain laurel.” What’s not to love?
“Strawberry Moonrise”: After that little nod to their roots, we’re back in witchy territory. One minute of “ooh” against a mosquito buzz of fiddling. Red skies at night, sailors’ delight.
“Year after Year”: It’s interesting that they decided to separate this track from the last, with a separate title and everything. (“Strawberry moon” is a lyric here.) This one is for old friends. A straight-up singer-songwriter tune. A little twang, SoCal style.
“Rhododendron”: Hey now. They’re really going to close this album with an Asheville tune? Jarosz is singing in the higher part of her range, which feels like early morning sun. Just a little bit of light, over there, on the other side of that ridge. And here she is with another bird—wrens this time. Loud little round birds, scattering in this song as the “smoke is thickening o’er the mountain.” The Blue Ridge giving way to the Smokies. If this album is a witch’s journey, which is what it feels like to me, this is where she’s seeping back to nature. Laying her head down. “Moss be my emerald pillow / when I make my bed on the forest floor.” It goes out with the harmonies making a sort of round. We’re in that same kind of misty mystery that brought us into this album. Call it bookends, but I’d rather say parentheses. The ideas between the two parenths are maybe not central to the story, but they mustn’t go unsaid.
Geez. What a great album. I look forward to sneaking it onto the speakers between my daughter’s Sabrina Carpenter and my son’s Lady Gaga this summer. It’ll be a good one for stargazing or long morning drives or coming home from the beach. I’m sorry I snoozed a few weeks on it, but it’s worth the wait.