Back in the summer of 2020 we wrote about Scorpio Sun, a record by the Nashville-based songwriter Sara Rachele. The album signified a pivot away from the ballroom crooner style that Rachele had pursued until then, incorporating rock and folk influences to move towards something rawer and more visceral. A collection of songs “earnest and energetic and furious too” which placed stormy takedowns of misogynistic industries and ominous harbingers of some approaching doom next to wistful and melancholic folk songs. The result was a record on which “sadness and loss coalesce into a beauty of their own,” we wrote, “and conjure the possibility of something better on the other side.”
Next year sees Sara Rachele return with Heartstrings, a brand new album released via Ropeadope Records. Recorded with between London, Brooklyn and Rachele’s hometown of Little 5 Points in Atlanta, Georgia, and with a wide array of collaborators and friends, the album’s diversity is apparent in its very essence. With elements of pop, folk, Americana and jazz all comingling, the songs are tied together by a sixties retro-polish, casting Rachele as the archetypal troubadour—a figure always moving, always searching, never content in one place for too long.
Single ‘Go South’ encapsulates this aesthetic. A rich country rock jam carved from the Americana tradition, equal parts smouldering emotion and heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability. Though it is far more polished than anything on Scorpio Sun, the mood is as stark as ever, Rachele’s croon emerging through the brooding bluesy style with a hard won wisdom.
Get wise or go south
New York will spit you out
Get tough or just get out
Get wise
Get wise or go