Things have moved in a swift upward trajectory for Haley Heynderickx since we featured her Fish Eyes EP back at the start of 2016. It was an EP full of quality and promise, what we described as “four lyrical folk songs magnified into something larger, various additional instrumentation and electric flourishes transforming the sound into a kind of rock hybrid, and allowing the feeling behind the songs to be more fully realised.”
Now Haley Heynderickx has released her debut LP, I Need to Start a Garden, an album that delivers on the promise and then some. Built on foundations of folk from the second half of the 20th century, the eight songs display an impressive diversity, from delicate acoustic strums to full-blooded folk rockers. And Heynderickx sits at the centre of it all equal parts tender and tenacious, glimmering with empathy and burning with a sense of self-belief.
Opener ‘No Face’ is a short song that pairs gentle acoustic guitar with Heynderickx’s aching vocals, which add a splash of classic country romanticism to what could otherwise be a stripped-back folk song. Follow-up ‘The Bug Collector’ feels equally stark and immediate, the solitary finger-picked guitar and expressive vocals accentuated with gauzy atmospherics and distant trombone. The lyrics are interesting too, arthropod home invasions become metaphors for much larger forces, an imaginative combination of playfulness and poetic weight that’s very impressive.
“And there’s a praying mantis
Prancing on your bathtub
And you swear it’s a priest
From a past life out to getchaAnd I digress
‘Cause I must make you the perfect evening
I try my best
To put the priest inside a jam jar”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=967384525 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=2767796539]
‘Untitled God Song’ is another lyrically inventive track, re-imagining a higher power as a very much real, maternal figure, replacing the flowing white beard with “thick hips and big lips.” Inspired by her religious upbringing, the song serves as a lighthearted look at the dogma of organised religion, an ode to her mother and a nod to the great metaphysical unknown all around us.
There’s a rich feeling of empathy across I Need to Start a Garden, a sense that Heynderickx is striving to care for herself and others, an idea captured in the title’s metaphorical garden. It’s the perfect image in lots of ways, the repetitive, cyclical nature, periods of quiet patience and breathless progress, the fact that we’re sometimes powerless in face of the elements, and despite this cling to a steadfast hope of recovery and growth. The metaphor is aired in the lyrics on several tracks. “You tended your garden like heaven and hell,” Heynderickx sings on ‘Jo’, “and you built the birds houses to see if it helped at all.” It’s a song imbued with a real sense of feeling, confronting the death of a loved one with a careful kindness.
Another example is ‘Worth It’, the album’s longest track, and in many ways its messily cathartic peak. Beginning with sparse electric guitar, Heynderickx’s vocals soon emanate from its centre, delivering lines with a clear sense of purpose and undeniable self confidence. The song sounds like the realisation of something, a decisive move to take control of the future, the quiet thrill of freedom moving its way across body and soul. “Maybe I’ve been selfish all along, I guess you should know that,” she sings, “That I don’t need you there / But I need you sometimes / But not all the time, no.”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=967384525 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=167499725]
As we said in a preview last year, lead single ‘Oom Sha Lala’ combines lyrical complexity with an over-arching sense of effortlessness. Bobbing along with a carefree refrain (“Oom sha la la, oom sha la la,” etc.), the song lulls the listener into a false sense of security, the urgency and intensity of Heynderickx’s vocals feeling therefore all the more visceral and surprising. This escalates into the closing segment, where the manic desperation of the vocals escalates into yelps, Heynderickx’s voice breaking under the conviction of her words.
Final song ‘Drinking Song’, which originally appeared on the Fish Eyes EP, is a pseudo-autobiographical tale, based on Heynderickx’s experience of being a student in Prague. But its scope is much wider than it first seems, the tales of a pub-full of people singing together becoming illustrative of a much larger sense of unity and community.
“And the edge of the world makes it seem
That everyone gone is still singing the same song
And I can believe in these things;
That everyone’s singing along
The good the bad and the gone”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=967384525 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=2451832979]
I Need To Start a Garden is the perfect album for the onset of spring. It’s all about growth and the hope of new beginnings, but also doesn’t shy away from the necessary hard work that makes such growth possible. It’s a reminder that plants are not the only things that need to be tended and cared for, but also that they’re not the only things that can flourish and bloom either.
I Need to Start a Garden is out via Mama Bird Recording Co. and you can get it from Bandcamp.
