Rainwater is the project of Seattle, Washington‘s Blake Luley, who works somewhere at the intersection of rock, folk and electronic genres to conjure a sound at once familiar and strange. The style has proven fitting, with recent Rainwater albums chronicling changes in Luley’s life and exploring the balance between the known and unknown. Released in 2017, Place centred on a cross-country move from New York to the Pacific Northwest, while 2019’s Saturn Return drew on the astrological themes of the title to push into the change and rebirth involved in finding a new home, not to mention the altered relationships that result.
This summer sees the release of In-Between, a brand new Rainwater LP to be released on vinyl and cassette via Furious Hooves and Luley’s own label, The Home Dome. The title is once again fitting, because while he is now settled in a new home, the record finds Luley experiencing a number of other fundamental changes. The songs were recorded in snatches of free time while finishing grad school, starting to teach at an elementary and preparing for the birth of his first child, not to mention the ongoing pandemic. An album, in other words, recorded in between the more pressing demands on one’s life.
As ever, Rainwater take on such themes shrewdly, homing in on specific situations and emotions within these larger circumstances and casting everything in a poppy, dreamy light. Anxiety and grief might be the driving emotions, but In-Between is probably the most vivid offering yet. This time Luley plays all the instruments, inviting wife Aviva Stampfer, cousin Amy Godwin and friend Stephen Steen to provide lush vocal harmonies. Add in drum machines, synths and drifting, glistening guitars, and the result is anything but gloomy. As the press release puts it: Who knew working through the hardest experiences of your life could sound so fun?
Today sees the release of the LP’s second single, ‘Us Only’, which you can listen to below. With its weightless synths and near-whispered vocals, the track evokes the shimmering dread of sleepless nights, emerging raw and tenderised and in search of some reprieve. The atmosphere will be familiar to anyone who’s had even the briefest of skirmishes with insomnia. The hyper-vivid textures of sleep deprivation, a kind of emotional knife-edge where everything is cast in its most extreme light. The state finds Luley turn inward, collapsing the world down into its smallest, most bearable form. Taking consolation from the love close at hand.
Up all night,
mute dark meets mirrored moonlight
feel alright,
just not quite rightMy eyes weak by the time
sun soaks sweaty sheets
my heart meek
by the time I remember what I needHold me like the world’s us only
In-Between will be released on 13th August on Furious Hooves and you can pre-order it now from the Rainwater Bandcamp page.
