“Is it okay? The way you miss before you knew better?” asks Josaleigh Pollett on latest single ‘The Nothing Answered Back’. “When you could change the shape of love depending on the weather?” The song, the first from forthcoming album In the Garden, By The Weeds set for release this summer, exists within the space opened by this introduction. An excavation of the present which inevitably tends pastward, tracing a presiding cynicism back to its roots in search of a cause. “Do you feel shame?” as Pollett wonders, “the way you live like you deserved it better? / Is it your age? Collective pain? Or just the constant fretting?”
With a spacious arrangement brought to life with the help of Jordan Watko, ‘The Nothing Answered Back’ works through these questions with a tangible intimacy. A soundscape of lo-fi textures and flitting details which grounds the listener in a flat melancholy, though one which simmers with gathering momentum. As though regret is a potential energy building within itself, threatening to spill or to break. The resulting mood falls somewhere between mourning and self-flagellation, Josaleigh Pollett evoking the spirit of Jason Molina both directly with the “We’re all supposed to try” motto but also in the fatalistic embrace of self-examination no matter how dark.
Aren’t you grateful for the nothingness?
The way that sparks don’t catch?
You asked for this and here it is –
The nothing answered back.
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The song comes complete with video filmed and directed by Ryan Ross, with choreography written and performed by Nora Price. Check it out below:
In the Garden, By The Weeds will be released on the 14th July and you can pre-order it now from the Josaleigh Pollett Bandcamp page.