Eva Foote is a folk musician from Edmonton, Canada, who is soon moving to Montreal to pursue a career in acting at the National Theatre School. Her début EP, Sparrow & Stone, feels like a product of these two facts, with Foote confronting ideas of leaving home and missing loved ones across six bittersweet songs.
The release opens with the title track, a gentle, atmospheric song with that falls somewhere between Joni Mitchell, Fleet Foxes and Horse Feathers, Foote’s lyrics steeped in the natural world and magnified by the backing harmonies:
“Morning song calls me so sweetly
begs me listen, begs you meet me again
Oh meet me againCome with sorrow, bring me old news,
wicked weather, broken and blue
I just want youI’ll find my stride on this path alone,
with songs of a sparrow and heart of a stone”
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‘Strong Hands’ feels more direct, the writing moving away from metaphor in favour of candid communication. Variation is seen in Foote’s vocals too, the lush harmonies of the first track stripped back leaving something more conversational, her voice straining in places, pulled taut by emotion. ‘Maria’ sees this stretched further, a moody, bluesy song that teeters on the edge of something, while ‘Two of a Kind’ is soft and slow and finger-picked, Sydney Leard’s harmonies supporting the sense of simultaneous love and loss stitched through the lyrics:
“We’re still in a grey zone, a war-zone,
through telephones, the back of the bar.
Your eyes have been blood shot for weeks my dear
but still full of stars”
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‘Passing Through’ is strong and certain, as if written from the other side of some nameless trouble, a place where new found perspective allows a sense of conviction in healing. Closer ‘Something I Know’ cements this idea, imagining future fear and grief gilded with a belief she will get through. What makes the song, and the release in general, so special is that Foote does not resort to grand, highfalutin ideals in order to get this idea across. Instead she favours a quiet yet firm faith in goodness, as if life, for all of its highs and lows, tends towards an equilibrium of peace.
“Things will get harder,
That’s something I know.
[…]
I know I’ll get better
That’s something I know”
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This is one of those releases that breaks over you slowly. The harmonies make for an agreeable first listen but the songs grow in depth with each spin as you realise the prettiness is not in place of sorrow but in spite of it. Sparrow & Stone owes more to nature than even the title suggests, detailing an existence tough and sad yet infused with an insistent beauty, a sense of wonder and joy that sits high in your chest.
Sparrow & Stone will be released on the 13th August and you can buy it now from Eva Foote’s Bandcamp page. For those of you in/near Edmonton, Foote will play a release show that evening at the Yellowhead Brewey with Braden Gates. You can get tickets here.