We first wrote about Melissa Mary Ahern back in the summer upon the release of the song ‘Maria, Maria‘. Having rose to prominence on Doveman’s mix of Sufjan Stevens’s Christmas rarity ‘Lonely Man of Winter’, released in 2017 on Asthmatic Kitty Records, Ahern continued to collaborate with Doveman for further singles before charting her own course with ‘Maria, Maria’.
In contrast to the “cool contemporary tracks” that came before it, we wrote, ‘Maria, Maria’ was “altogether more timeless.” Centred on the titular character, the song was “carved out of the folk tradition, its earthy tones owing as much to the landscape as the love in question,” leading to a track of “plucked guitar and ambling percussion […] something barefoot and intimate.”
Building upon that new direction, Melissa Mary Ahern is back with a brand new song, ‘How Will I Know’. Built from the simplest acoustic guitar line, the song hangs upon Ahern’s smoky vocals which rise from barely a murmur to wistful croon and back again. The result is warm and fond and coloured by sadness, a song for late evenings on the porch front, the sun dipping below the horizon once again and casting a golden light, if only for a moment.