Growing up in the pre-algorithm internet era, where CDs still made sense to buy, and you couldn’t find one hundred Texas-swing country bands just by asking your Motorola Razr to rattle them off, I somehow discovered folk music. In the sort of midwestern town with two country stations, two Christian stations, and a country station, any discovery was both hard-won and incredibly cherished. Then, one Christmas, I received an iTunes gift card and had the brilliant idea to type “acoustic guitar” into the search bar. Enter, Gregory Alan Isakov’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere.
It might seem like a weird opening in a review for Emory Duncan’s new single, Halifax, but the connections are actually pretty strong. Not only does Halifax (and Duncan’s overall sound) share a good bit of ground with the Enoian textures and gentle-as-grass-brushing-in-the-wind instrumentation, but this track in particular was produced by Jamie Mefford, who produced for (you guessed it) Gregory Alan Isakov, along with Nathaniel Rateliff, among others.
But Emory Duncan isn’t merely writing songs in Isakov’s style, even if there are plenty of similarities in the production. Duncan’s songwriting is clear and concise, from the Ted Kooser school of “the reader ought to know exactly what you mean the first time.”
you were born swingin’, you were raised on the stuff
grew up in a house that put God before love
The gentle guitar, the piano chording on the changes, the swelling steel guitar, and the background synth all sit beneath the lyrics. These are anthems, despite the slow tempo and the mild manner of the performance—if you catch Duncan live, I’d be shocked as hell if the audience wasn’t singing every word. His vocals are athletic and well-honed, not trying to impress so much as perfectly deliver the lyrics. Duncan self-describes as a student of Neil Young, Jeff Buckley, etc., and it shows in every second of this track. The song first, the song as a poem, the music as delivery, and nothing gets in the way of that.
What I absolutely love about this particular corner of the folk world is that this is the sort of music you can listen to when in the middle of the absolute worst of grief, or when you have to get up at 4 am for a flight, a long drive, or to do some hard work you’d really rather avoid. When we’re feeling inward and fragile, like even an over-enthusiastic strum or a full-on snare hit will knock us down, this is the music that can coax us on through.
For fans of: (surprise) Gregory Alan Isakov, Julien Baker, Katie Gavin, Phoebe Bridgers.
Written by Willow Stonebeck
