Like a northerly loon lingering too long in the cooling waters of early November, Haley Heynderickx’s voice calls luminous, haunting. Her soft, empowered vocals layer in gentle strokes over her defining acoustic guitar, emboldened by swaying strings and horns. Her message is profuse. Aware of itself, Heynderickx’s second studio album Seed of a Seed is simultaneously personal and prescriptive. Released last Friday Nov. 1, it questions the American system of values, reflects on the human capacity to love and muses on nature as a spiritual force in its radiant sound and fecund wordplay.
Released with Mama Bird Recording Co., an independent studio based in Portland, OR,the project retains its accessibility while attaining a deep personal hue. The opening track, “Gemini” is a convoluted self portrait with at least one mirror. It’s an indulgent meandering on the self in soulful guitar plucking, admitting “I can lack communication / I can lack coordination / Inside my awkward occupations.” Heynderickx is raw and personal, she fearlessly puts forth her shortcomings before any line of questioning. She subsequently shares curiosity about what the self is, beginning “There’s a woman in the corner claiming / she is just the former one of me / and I am her just out of context.” The song shapes a narrative between the singer and her past self, the events that make her who she is today. Heynderickx questions what the self is — are we multiple? Do we exist in conversation with our past selves? Why do we make the decisions we do? The climax emerges with a dissonant violin and the singer’s double demanding she “pull the fuck over / Just to stare at a purple clover off the highway.” The tempo reigns to an amble; “I finally begin to feel better” transports listeners to the bridge. Indeed “Gemini” is a mirror, if not to the audience to be more self aware, to herself, ending “I can see you now / I can honor you now.”
Serving her imperfections fresh from the start, Heynderickx turns elsewhere for the remainder of the album. “Seed of a Seed,” the title and lead single on the album released July 30, flourishes hope and memory, recognizing where a person comes from, our parents and our “parents’ parents.” It’s also wishful for the future, Heynderickx lingers on the word lucky: “If I get lucky, maybe a simple life, If I get lucky, maybe some free time.” She wraps these personal hopes with greater concerns, citing the need for escape from a “consumer flood,” imprinting a larger theme of the album.
Heynderickx spends a lot of lyrical capital naming the widespread grapple with the over-commodification of 21st century life in the United States. On the album’s final song, “Swoop,” the Oregon grown orator’s ever delicate vocals dance over twiddling guitar strings; “Don’t tempt me with marketing / I won’t buy it today / ‘Cause there’s an artistry / In the day-to-day to day, to day.” She contrasts the artistry of living to the material slot machine of every grocery store or advertisement, and acknowledges life as art. The artist makes a bold and powerful statement: Art stands stark against capital gain or exchange.
Heynderickx broadens her cultural critique to include cell phones, which show up lyrically in and after “Gemini,” as the self she unveils struggle, in anguish, “alone and addicted to [her] phone.” On “Redwoods (Anxious God),” the songwriter laments “That man and bird had used to sing / Well now the only man here’s cell phone ring ring rings.” She crows a common cry, that humanity is falling out of touch with its surroundings. The lyrics in this track embrace a yearning of what came before, of the ability to talk to the redwoods, to be aware of our surroundings.
Her attention to nature in the album is religious. On the same song, the redwoods are the gods she refers to, contemplating that humans used to be able to converse with the trees. In a calculated desperation, her voice marches in line with the acoustic bass: “I’d do anything to hear the redwoods talk.” Mapping what in her view is the straying trajectory of our species, she ends the song, “Humankind is getting lost.”
The album preaches a spiritual respect for the natural world that civilization seems to have stripped the earth of; Heynderickx stresses an all encompassing appreciation for the green and weaves it into the fabric of what she calls the artistry of living. This sentiment has its spring in the fourth track, “Mouth of a Flower,” stressing the embrace of cycles and the human existence within this. She describes how hummingbirds and seagulls “take” from the earth, suckling from the gobs of plantae, slurping the center of a clam. Heynderickx turns to humanity after this: “And we take and we take and we take take take,” with violins mimicking her chirp. The sound here elucidates her meaning: humanity participates in the cycles of life just like other animals, but purports that humans may be taking too much.
Seed of a Seed sows a handful of angst to the progression of our society but also takes a deep breath and asks how we can live well. Taking familiar folk song structures and making them her own, Heynderickx’ collection begins with a distraught picture of the songwriter, and metamorphoses to poignant elucidations on the regression of advancement, and the human step that we can take towards repairing our world. The final verse is an amalgamation of the genius reflections of Heynderickx, “For the soil is returning / My mind begins burning to know / What’s beyond today / Is there an artistry to feeling this way? / Is there an artistry in the day to-day, to-day? / And there’s an artistry in going away.”
You can catch a glimpse of Haley Heynderickx in Albany at The Egg next Wednesday. I’m driving if you want to join me— we’ll be pit stopping for purple clover.
Aidan Goldberg is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].