Lydia Loveless shares new single "September" ft. Laura Jane Grace (watch video)
Lydia Loveless releases a new album, Daughter, on Friday (9/25) via her new label Honey, and ahead of that she’s shared another new single, “September.” It’s a gorgeous, heart-rending piano ballad, and as mentioned, Laura Jane Grace sings with Lydia on it. They sound amazing together; watch the video, directed by Lydia and Michael Casey and starring Bridget Christine, Kyle Cox, & Scotty Sandwich, below.
“‘September’ is a song about the loneliness and ache of being a teenager,” Lydia writes. “I wanted to depict that in the video without being too personal, and we thought Bridget and Kyle would be the perfect people to star in it. There’s nothing I love more than not being in my own video, so I loved just watching everyone get into character and tell this sad story in front of me.”
As touring is off because of the coronavirus pandemic, Lydia is doing a series of livestream performances to support Daughter, which begin Thursday (9/24), when she’ll perform the new album in full, backed by her band, from Secret Studio in Columbus, OH. A solo, career-spanning set follows on 10/8, and the series wraps up with “Lydia’s Piano Lounge” on 10/22. Tickets to all three shows are on sale now.
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Must-Hear Folk Albums of 2020 So Far
Bill Callahan – Gold Record
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – Reunions
Arlo Mckinley – Die Midwestern
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Neil Young – Homegrown
In a 1975 Rolling Stone interview, Neil called his long-shelved-and-now-finally-released album Homegrown "the darker side to Harvest." With more hindsight, he called it "the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon" in Jimmy McDonough's 2002 Neil Young biography Shakey. Those albums are all on Neil's folkier, more acoustic side, and Homegrown is indeed cut from that cloth. As soon as you hear the opening of "Separate Ways," you're transported right back to the warmth of the Harvest era. It's of the same proto-slowcore variety of that album's opener "Out On the Weekend," but even more haunting and melancholic. Just 30 seconds in, and Homegrown already lives up to the description Neil gave Cameron Crowe of it 45 years ago.
That same mood carries over into second track "Try," which -- like "Separate Ways" -- features The Band's Levon Helm on drums, and Levon really managed to capture the bare-bones, slow-paced drumming style that these types of quietly revolutionary Neil Young songs always demanded. "Try" is also one of two songs on Homegrown with backing vocals by Emmylou Harris (the other being "Star of Bethlehem"), and her soaring voice makes for a truly lovely contrast with Neil's more somber delivery. And as melancholic as those songs are, they've got nothing on the melancholy of the entirely-solo cuts "Mexico" (voice and piano) and "Kansas" (voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica), or on "White Line," which features Neil, his acoustic, and his harmonica joined only by some lead guitar by The Band's Robbie Robertson. It's on those breathtaking songs where you can really hear why Neil -- coming right off the release of On The Beach -- might have felt like he was digging himself into a hole of dour, depressive music. But all these years later -- now that Neil has cemented his legacy over and over again and proven to be an artist who can evolve and adapt with the times without losing his own uniqueness -- those songs feel like buried treasure, especially for fans who gravitate towards his most hushed material. Full review here.