Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
Running a combined eight and a half minutes in total length, the one-two punch “American Man” and “My Mother and Me” sets us up for a slew of potent poeticisms that are par for the course in Laura Sumner’s new record Red Clay Blue Sky. While the former is a bit more rock-oriented by design, the latter has more of an urgent attitude that I would associate with proper crossovers, of which there are five included in Red Clay Blue Sky this June.
When Sumner is singing to us, and only us, there’s an intimacy between artist and audience that doesn’t go without stealing every ounce of the spotlight away from the other elements in this mix, all of them seeming to present a collective tone I was immediately hooked on in my initial listening session.
“Telling Georgia Goodbye” is the most ambitious composition on this EP, and not solely because of its stunning instrumental clarity. There’s something brilliant about the way the textural presence of the slow-picked strings influences the lyrical narrative, but it’s how Sumner is weaving her emotions into the tonality of the guitar and distant percussion that really feels like the best part of this performance. She can dispense weighty words like nobody’s business, and still, she chooses to be a little hesitant with some of her emissions here. This develops mystique no matter what way we’re interpreting these verses, and it arguably makes the tracklist flow just a little better than it would have to begin with.
“Cowboy from Queens” is an extroverted classic rock song for sure, but it doesn’t sound like it’s a big chunk of the past resting on the shoulders of a record that has its heart and soul in the heat of the moment. There’s a contemporary affirmativeness I quickly found in this track that isn’t nearly as accessible in “My Mother and Me” and even the concluding wonder “Tides,” and if it’s an element of Sumner’s sound that she could perhaps hone a bit more proficiently the next time she makes new material, her sequel to this EP could be all the more dynamic and emotionally-charged. Even after all these years, this player still has so much potential – and it’s getting a lot of good looks in Red Clay Blue Sky.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/red-clay-blue-sky-ep/1620775673
Both the shortest song on the record and the closing number for the tracklist, “Tides” slickly melds the cerebral with the straightforward for what feels like one of the more languid performances on this disc, and when it’s concluded it feels like we’ve only listened to the first half of an album as opposed to a complete extended play. There’s so much more to this story; so much more that Laura Sumner has to disclose between decadent melodies and chaste beats, and if we’re lucky she won’t take nearly as long working on a follow-up to this masterpiece as she did producing something in the wake of her virgin LP Dreamology, which was released some fourteen years ago now.
Julie Blankenship
