An album that needs some hard listening to appreciate– but rewards it with layers of beauty and complexity.
To Oregon songwriter Haley Heynderickx, “a seed represents incubation and the process of navigating the darkest, deepest parts of ourselves before becoming realised. It is a process of turning inward, listening, and noticing, and trusting one can create something honest and true despite all the constant noise around us—whether that’s the news, social media, or our own self-doubt.”
‘Gemini’ starts rather tentatively. The words offer a quite complex sentiment which comes down to her past self confronting her present self demanding to be heard and influence her thoughts and actions. By taking control of her life, she stops “just to stare at purple clover off the highway, and see the clover as a gift, a gift I almost missed, you know I finally begin to feel better.” At that point in the music takes off… An interesting way of looking at emotions many of us will recognise.
On the surface ‘Foxglove’ is a far simpler song lyrically at least but her intricate finger guitar style which follows her vocal melody and along with Denzel Mendoza’s trombone creates a s Soundscape which reflects the theme of Daydreams. The title song and ‘Mouth of A Flower’ add Cello to her guitar, the latter also including William Seiji Marsh on Electric Guitar and words that again use nature as a metaphor for relationships. “The mouth of a flower. The hummingbird waits. Guarding his morsel. As he takes and he takes, and he takes.”
‘Redwoods (Anxious God)’ builds on the theme of nature as a helper to building her sense of self. She recognises that she is growing and changing, and that this is an ongoing process. “The irony is I’ll still be asking these questions; I’m not on the other side of it.”
Musically the organic feel that the Trombone, strings, acoustic and tenor guitars bring to her tunes, keeps the listener in mind of the forest, flowers, and birds which she uses as her lyrical props. The song ‘Sorry Fahey’ highlights her musical influence, although it’s unclear what she has to be sorry for.
Where the album began with a tentative urgency, the final song ‘Swoop’ finds Heynderickx in a steadier place, finding herself more at peace. She says it is “the peace of sunlight warming her hands, the vibrating air of a hummingbird flitting just out of sight. It’s a seed—a purple clover—sprouting out of the loamy soil not in a garden, but from within a whole forest.”
This is not an easy listening album, despite the delicate acoustic sounds which it uses. But spending time with Haley Heynderickx’ words and music will be rewarding and may offer ways to start looking at your own thoughts and emotions.
