Sophomore release unveils a songwriter of the highest order.
Relationships, current and past, provide the overriding theme to the twelve songs assembled on Erin Ash Sullivan’s excellent sophomore album “Signpost and Marks”. Sullivan, a native of New England, though she and her family didn’t settle there until after her twelfth birthday, currently resides in Massachusetts, and had initially garnered favourable reviews whilst a member of Edith O, a band she formed with college friend Amy Speace. The band released one, critically acclaimed album “Tattooed Queen”(1998), but broke up shortly after as Sullivan, possibly due to sleep deprivation having just given birth six weeks earlier, failed to show up for the band’s record release show. The subsequent years would see Sullivan marry, start a family, resume her career as a schoolteacher and become a published author, but in 2018, the lure of songwriting and performing proved too strong and in 2021 she released her debut solo album “We Can Hear Each Other”, to much critical approval.
The new album opens with a trilogy of songs that tackle the complexities of long-term relationships. Starting with the intriguingly titled ‘Goat On A Stone Wall‘, replete with Pedal Steel and fiddle that infuses a bluegrass vibe to a narrative tainted with regret as it reflects on sacrifices, some made and others not. ‘Rest Stop Bird’, takes the story to the inevitable conclusion of separation, with the line “sometime leaving doesn’t need a word”, exposing Sullivan’s abundant skill of saying more with less, all beautifully delivered by a voice that exudes a wisdom that only time and experience can bring, with the sagacious potency of her poetry drawing favourable comparison to Beth Neilson Chapman.
It may be stating the obvious, considering Sullivan’s past professions, but she is an exceptional storyteller, of which ‘One Time I Stole A Book’, and ‘Winter Walk’, are two of the finest story songs I’ve heard all year. The former tells the true tale of her grandparents as it reflects on the broader insecurities and doubts of entering adulthood, whilst the latter is classic noir cinema, the tension and intrigue enhanced by some fine Pedal Steel and fiddle playing, along with the narratives deliberate evasiveness, “two (foot) prints out, one set home”, helps to leave the listener with just enough doubt to unnerve.
A different type of relationship binds the last three tracks. One of motherhood. Here, Sullivan draws on her personal experience to capture all the parental angst, pride and bittersweet emotions of watching a child grow and become independent. Once again her poetry is evocative as it reflects on the duality of selflessness and the selfish act of not wanting to let go as she sings “it’s harder than you know”, on the closing number ‘Before You Go’, with her delivery at times reminiscent to that of Gretchen Peters.
Much credit for the album must go to producer Doug Kwarter, both for the instrumental arrangement throughout that helps to supply the perfect conduit for the twelve tracks, along with his excellent musicianship, playing all the instruments on the album bar the guitar and ukulele which are supplied by Sullivan.
With “Signposts And Marks”, Sullivan has delivered an album that unveils a singer-songwriter of the highest order and should position her comfortably alongside the cream of today’s female artists such as the aforementioned Chapman, Peters, and Speace.
