Have you ever heard music that sampled a dog’s paws hitting a hardwood floor? Well, now’s your chance: singer-songwriter Lucy Wainwright Roche will release her long-awaited album “Little Beast” on Oct. 12, after years of hard work alongside longtime collaborator, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Brooke Hamlin (and of course, Jordan’s dog Scout).
Wainwright Roche’s songs are as melancholic and depressing as ever; nearly every track details her personal heartbreak and strife, proving that life’s worst moments are the quietest and loneliest ones. But, she can turn pain into beauty like no one else. Starting with “Soft Line,” featuring Hamlin on piano and Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers on guitar, Wainwright Roche eases into the reality of an unhappy ending. “Watch out or the sun will set / On the picture we tried to get / On the story of why we met / The maker or the match.” She doesn’t tiptoe around the topic for long, though.
The next song, “Quit With Me,” a haunting duet with singer-songwriter Matthew Perryman Jones, addresses the harshness of an unwanted, yet necessary parting of a couple. Wainwright Roche spoke about how the song came about: “I wrote this song after having dinner with a friend who was going through a divorce – he was trying to describe the feeling of alienation that can happen between two people who love each other very much but who have reached the end of the road of their relationship.” For the first time in her career, Wainwright Roche has jumped head first into some of life’s hardest-to-swallow realities, and the result: a cohesive, heart wrenching body of music that isn’t concerned with even the slightest bit of optimism to sugarcoat its overwhelming angst.
“Fifth of July” perfectly encapsulates the dread most of us have been wading through since November 2016, with just the sincerity and urgency of Wainwright Roche’s voice, and a soft, steady thrum as a backdrop. This discontent bleeds into “Trouble,” an account of the uneasiness that comes with feeling isolated, like there’s no “right answer” to life’s seemingly perpetual problems: “Everybody’s trouble / That’s a bet that you won’t lose / Trouble that you’re born with / And the trouble that you choose.”
The album reaches its peak with the pairing of the title track and “Heroin.” The former is quite possibly the best song Wainwright Roche has ever written; it forms our dark side– the anxiety and fear we feel when we are unsure of ourselves– into a devious, omnipresent “Little beast.” “Your favorite treat is not the rarest / But the rawest / You will feast upon a heart in doubt / But we know / We’re not supposed to feed you / ‘Cause we need that struggle / Like a hole in the head.” “Heroin” compares the dependence on a (former) romantic partner to drug addiction, “Some things that I want to say / Aren’t survivable / Or advisable / Like ‘Happy Birthday Heroin’ / But God, / How I loved you / And how I still do.”
Wainwright Roche finally comes to the end of her tether in “The City,” succumbing to the constant pressure and uncertainty of life as a touring musician; “Behind the Wheel” is her concluding lament about never having all of life’s answers: “How does it feel to be / The one behind the wheel?” and you’re left with the sound of “beast feet” tapping away on the floor.
Lucy Wainwright Roche is currently on tour, and you can see all of her scheduled shows and pre-order the album at lucywainwrightroche.com. Lastly, I couldn’t finish this article in good conscience without noting that the videos for “Soft Line” and “Heroin” were partially filmed by a drone named “Droney Mitchell.”
