A warm welcome to 2023 for all the AUK readers out there. The latest single from Ever More Nest, ‘Happy New Year’, is a perfect way to begin afresh. This Americana and folk infused New Orleans-based band is fronted by singer and songwriter Kelcy Wilburn. Her melodic vocal is at the heart of this engaging song, which builds in a very satisfying way to its conclusion. In the beginning, ‘Happy New Year’ is slow and atmospheric, before it takes on a more hopeful, even joyful, tone part way through. New Year celebrations and hopes for the future are full of energy and yet marking the passage of time also prompts more sombre and introspective recollections and reflections; it’s a strangely conflicted way of looking at our lives and relationships that is captured well in both the song’s thoughtful, narrative lyrics and in the accompanying video, which presents blurred images of parties and fireworks as if her memory of events is fogged. It’s worth paying particularly close attention to those cleverly-written words, which offer an interesting look at how relationships change over time.
Wilburn says of the song: “One of my favorite photographs of a particular friend and me was taken on New Year’s Eve as we walked our way to a giant bonfire made of drying Christmas trees. The old Mid-City New Orleans tradition had gotten unmanageable by that year, and it was a crazy fun and wild thing to witness. New Year’s is such a strange holiday—celebrating the passage of time, a sometimes joyful and sometimes painful process we can’t control. We celebrate the end of a good year; we celebrate the end of a bad year. As humans, we’re always trying our best to mark the beginnings and endings of things that never really stop or start. New Year’s celebrations can be arbitrary, but they can also be quite powerful. I love the dichotomy.”
This single is the first release since Ever More Nest’s latest album, ‘Out Here Now’, which was well-received in August 2022. Enjoys this sonic journey through time and then check out the album.
