Reviews

Nicole Mish
Album: Hope Is Restless
Label: Whole Sky
Tracks: 13
Website: https://www.nicolemish.com/

Following her impressive 2023 late bloomer debut, the San Francisco Bay Area singer-songwriter returns with a follow-up that, brimming with confidence and style, both consolidates and takes her to the next level as one of the best new names in folksy Americana.

Working with the late producer and arranger Aeron Z Jones, who also played almost all the instruments, it opens with the acoustic strummed guitar of 'Tell Me Something Good', a call for notes of positivity in an increasingly negative world ("Don't tell me, we're going down/The world's gone mad and hope is gone…Tell me the earth will mend, our children find their hope again/Tell me the chaos ends, Democracy is safe again…Tell me we will make it right").

Taken at a more up-tempo sway 'Ease My Mind' uses the metaphor of a run-down highway with the narrator learning to navigate life's potholes rather than steering a different way, finding hope in the stillness , whether it be faith or a lover that shows her how "to fight for light/That I never knew was mine" and to "ease the pedal from the gas and try to soothe my mind" until "the road feels right beneath my bones".

With spooked reverb guitars and son Noah Gothelf on banjo, the whisperingly sung 'I Talk To Ghosts' is an early standout (that to these ears echoes early REM) as the singer disavows materialism ("Our souls controlled by shiny things/We're pulled and tied like marionettes") and addictive social media screens in favour of spending time with 'ghosts', real people both past and present, flawed and complicated but holding strong to "things that we have long forgotten".

Kenneth Blacklock and Katy Bridges on yearning violins, 'Lose My Restless Mind' is another mid-tempo trotting strum with soft and sandy vocals that soar on line endings, the character seeking to escape the rut she's in ("My wanderings days are now scattered dust/I let them go then I turned to rust") because, while it may not be a healthy choice ("Tell me that you love me/Even though it's wrong"), remaining would be to lose herself.

Calling to mind Mary Chapin Carpenter, a brightly fingerpicked pattern drives 'A Heart Wants', another quiet anthem for hope, a lament about loss of innocence and a celebration of the resilience of the heart ("You can tame a wild heart into submission/You might think that it's content and all is fine/Oh, but a heart will haunt when a heart still wants/Hiding hope in its saddest song") as she sings "I believed that battered hearts could be unbroken/I believed that love could heal a gaping wound…a heart will hurt but a heart still wants/And the wanting will save its soul".

Anchored by Kris Gorski's piano and again coloured by twin violins, the soulful 'Take Me To A Place' is a call to the universe for healing and strength to rise above statis in a time of disconnection ("I'm trying to pretend/That this room isn't strange as can be/But this house is just cold in its soul, it's not home to me…Take me to a place where I belong/Take me to a place where I am strong"), the lines "those buckets of paint never covered/The emptiness lurking round here/I'll roam free of these walls before my whole soul disappears/I remember that girl without scars who trusted herself and the stars/I can hear her so clearly, she's calling me, wants me to leave…Last night I escaped to the roof and I saw the same moon that I saw long ago /It was beckoning me to a place that I don't even know " some of the year's most poignant.

A particular highlight, the slow walking, Melanie-tinged 'Wild Song' with its violin and cello is new vocal remix of a song off the previous album about ridding yourself of anxiety, soft Safka colours also shade the hushed and similarly-arranged standout almost hymnal 'How To Dream' which, Cooper Lower on guitars, Górski on piano and Daniel Sobiesiak adding cello, again is about healing, nature, music and dreaming as a shattered heart recovers ("When your heart thaws/When you're all raw/Then you will sing…Then you will fly")., and a bird chirping along. Fun, inspiring - a bop.

Górski on piano and Thomas Vang on bass, 'On A Bench' is a melodically jaunty tale of a busker, a world weary women and a bird in a park who connect through his song and again speaks to the healing power of music ("Lay your heart on my strings and I'll carry you home/Lay your head on my wings and I'll carry you home").

Vang, Lower, Blacklock, Bridges and her son returning, ' Let Them Shine' is a bluegrass banjo-led , its message about not letting haters silence the voice of truthtellers, the lines "what he built was good/And what he built was right/But they had to take him down/Because haters can't handle the light" particularly pertinent in the light of recent controversy about Macklemore's comments on the Ed Sheehan tour as she asks "What if you put down your stones and stopped throwing hate at shiny things/What if you basked in the light making a promise to do better things/What if you harness your power and throw it at the things that bring you peace/What if you rise from the ashes until you know that you are finally free".

With slide and mandolin, there's also a bluegrass feel to the up-tempo 'Possible', a personal call to rekindle the flames of hope ("Do you remember how it sometimes seemed/The kindness that the wide world needs/Was possible/Do you remember how we understood/We'd work together for the common good"), vested in the sentiment that if we "believe it now" then "Ten years from now…could there be light all around".

The rhythm echoing the title, the piano-led 'The River Rushes' was written in the wake of the death of Jones who grew up in Wales was named after a river there, and rises to the album's climax with a final anthem about her relationship to music and the powerful connection between it and nature ("I toss my song into the air/The river catches, always will/It rushes as it rounds the bend /And throws my music back again/A game we play so skillfully/A song becomes a symphony").

It ends with a piano-tinkled and cello-caressed seasonal bonus track, complete with jingle bells, the warm in front of a fire feel of 'Give Peace This Year', the title of which pretty much speaks for itself as she sings "I can't say I know a lot about religion/But I think Jesus wanted love instead of hate …Some tell us difference makes us weak instead of strong/Afraid they'll lose their power if we turn to love/But love's more powerful than all these hateful walls/We've trapped ourselves inside them, but we can tear them down/We can give a little peace this year…and we might all break free".

An album informed by hope, love and light when faced with the darkness, both internal and external, it deserves to find a place in all those end of year best of lists.

Mike Davies

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