Hailing from the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama but now based in Columbia, Missouri, Rae Fitzgerald is a songwriter who combines folk sensibilities with electronic flourishes. The result is an amalgamation of the organic and the synthetic, acoustic guitar next to electric, with drum loops weaving dreamy rhythms across which the vocals can drift. Released in 2016, debut album Popular Songs for Wholesome Families highlighted the power of such a combination, a record at once sorrowful and spacey, and capable of transporting the listener into Fitzgerald’s emotional world.
This summer sees Rae Fitzgerald return with a brand new EP, and her first with the ever-impressive Keeled Scales. The Lonely Listener builds on what came before, again incorporating synth and drum machine into what are ostensibly folk songs, but the release also represents a real evolution of the Rae Fitzgerald sound. Together with Will Reeves (drum loop, bass) and Ian Vardell (electric guitar), Fitzgerald has honed her style and achieved a newfound confidence, the songs’ various elements pulling in harmony to conjure something intuitive.
Lead single ‘Smileland’ is the perfect example. Where Popular Songs… crafted transportive soundscapes, the mellotron pads and drum loops serve the opposite purpose, grounding the listener in the immediate experience, and moreover finding beauty there. The result is a track of reconnection, with one’s self and the world all around, and in doing so lifting what might at first appear ordinary into something ecstatic.
When the dawn breaks through it shakes you
like a messenger of light
but the flower beds still greet you
and the water eats the sky
