Ismay Shares When I Was Younger

I don’t often gravitate towards live performance recordings, but it seems fitting considering the aims of Avery Hellman’s project, Ismay. The debut LP is filled with various field recordings and the trickling of nature, perhaps an homage to Hellman’s rural California upbringing, or perhaps just the lifeblood of humanity. For me, I was drawn to two things in this track: the vocals and the fingerpicking. The vocal delivery and storytelling reminds me of early Joanna Newsom; it’s distinctive and sort of takes on its own soul as notes land emphatically here and there, sort of rising and falling with each breath…not to mention the crystalline rise in pitch. In regards to the fingerpicking style, it helps the vocal delivery, sort of giving it a natural rhythm, or perhaps its the other way around; the accent from the fiddle/violin is an added bonus. This tune appears on Songs of Sonoma Mountain, out in February of 2020.