Born on Staten Island and now based in East Nashville, Becca Mancari grew up in a strictly religious family whose beliefs pushed towards the cultic end of the spectrum. With ideas of identity and sexuality that diverged from such dogma, Mancari spent years struggling to find a sense of belonging, eventually setting out to college and subsequent travels thereafter. “Following the wind from Appalachia to Arizona, from south Florida to India,” she searched for a community, a home, and found it in Nashville.
Winning an audience as a songwriter, not to mention as part of Bermuda Triangle (with Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Jesse Lafser), Mancari soon became a fixture of the folk scene. After releasing her debut solo album, Good Woman, in 2017, she has now signed with Captured Tracks, and released a brand new single, ‘Hunter’, to celebrate.
The song is very much born of her background and history. “‘Hunter’ was born from a true story reflecting back on a person from my childhood in church,” Mancari explains, an individual who would reemerge into her life in later years in extreme and threatening ways. “[They would] send me frequent letters in the mail telling me to ‘repent’ and that I was a ‘nasty woman’ for the way I dressed and for the things I sang about,” Mancari continues. “I received one of these letters the morning I planned to go into the studio with Zac Farro, and in that moment I sat down and wrote most of the lyrics, finishing the song in the studio that day. It is a song written from two people’s perspectives: one of course being the ‘Hunter’ figure and the other from me, saying ‘you will never stop me’.”
“Letters in the mailbox say I’m gonna hunt you down,” go the opening lines of ‘Hunter’, the violence belied by the light and playful grooves of the sound. “I am the prophet,” she claims. “I am the savior.” The sentences repeat into something of a mantra, as though the single-minded insistence of the person can only be developed and maintained through constant reaffirmation. As though the conviction deflates without a constant stream of hot air.
Only there is an opposite force in the song, an equally strong belief that counters in the only way possible. A similarly impassioned repetition, an opposing mantra. “Well you’re never gonna track me down,” Mancari sings in defiance, in refutation, her vocals lifting above the increasingly turbulent instrumentation. “No you’re never gonna find me out.”
Check out the video by Zac Farro below:
‘Hunter’ is out now and available via Captured Tracks, and you can follow Becca Mancari on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Photo by Zac Farro