Based in LA, Harrison Whitford is a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist perhaps best known as a touring guitarist with Phoebe Bridgers. Back in 2019, Whitford released his debut full-length album Afraid of Nothing, a record that collected songs he’d written in his formative years as a musician. The songs were stark and poignant, combining diary-like honesty and impressive guitar skills into quietly devastating tracks that each had a gleaming pop heart.
Now Harrison Whitford is back with a brand new album on Screwdriver Records. Titled Afraid of Nothing, it not just follows in its predecessor’s footsteps but builds on them, displaying considerable musical maturity and emotional depth as it conjures hopes and thoughts and worries from little more than guitar and vocals.
Perhaps the record’s stand-out moment, the title track may swap out guitar for piano but it’s also the best illustration of what Whitford does so well. Somehow simultaneously delicate and strong, wan and world-weary but with a silvery thread of hope too, the song evokes the almost physical relief of speaking both fears and desires out loud, even if no-one is listening.
This sense of catharsis was important in the song’s development. “I sat down at the piano one day in my friend Marshall’s studio, and started playing that chord progression with the internal melody and the lyrics sort of just happened right then and there,” Whitford explains. “I think subconsciously I was looking for a song with a refrain that would feel cathartic to sing, scream, whisper, whatever.”
in the white light freezing
I couldn’t keep form laughing
you said the moon looked tired
and that life was a small affair
Afraid of Nothing is out now via Screwdriver Records and you can get it from their webstore on a variety of formats.
