Led by songwriter Miranda Haney and featuring Sean Eads (keyboards, background vocals), Caro Somes (electric guitar, background vocals), Jack Owens (drums) and Patrick Curry (bass guitar), Austin-based quintet Other Vessels established themselves back last year with their debut EP, Empty Afternoon. What Haney described as “intimate portraits of the partnerships—romantic, platonic, and familial—that shape (and save) our lives,” the release introduced a pop-inflected style of folk that was warm and serene enough to evoke the fondness of its subject matter. Take standout track ‘Tangerine’, an ode to friendship in all of its tenuous beauty which would not be out of place sitting alongside contemporaries like Big Thief and Florry.
Now Other Vessels are back with ‘Sea Legs, their first release since Empty Afternoon, and one which suggests a slight change of tone for the band. Because while the considered, heartfelt style is continued, the new track sees Haney and co. lean into the pop sensibilities which bubbled beneath the surface of the previous EP. What results is something newly buoyant and every bit as sincere, the song leavened by a sunny rhythm and furthered by the earnest delivery. “I won’t call it God,” Haney sings in a moment which captures this feeling perfectly. “Because that feels like a memory that I buried in the yard with the bones of my pet lizard and the letter from the bank / they only loved me for my money and then they took that love away.”
Photo by Kylie Bly