Treva Blomquist was a finalist in the first songwriting competition she ever entered—the 2005 Kerrville New Folk Competition—joining the ranks of such distinguished past winners as Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin. The following year, she received recognition in the USA Songwriting Competition’s folk category. However, her greatest prize still awaited; the Grand Prize at the RiverBluff Performing Songwriter Competition for her song “I Could Get Used to This,” a track that would later grace her critically acclaimed debut album, Plain Vanilla Me. “These are melodies of depth, and the guitar work is exemplary,” Music Row magazine noted. Americana Tonight called her “An exceptional craftsperson,” while AmericanaUK said the album contained “wonderfully understated guitar playing and a warm, intimate lo-fi production. That combination makes this perfect for a Sunday morning.” The Syndicated RismixLive described her debut as “lyrics painfully confessional and music unadorned and soaring in style more than a little reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell. An unrestrained and starry beautiful listen…an all too infrequent homer for folk purists and ‘new acoustic’ fans alike.” That honesty and integrity became part of a continuing thread common to every one of the albums that followed— As It Should Be (2008), These Fading Things (2011), So We Would Know (2013), and The Risk & the Gift (2016).
When the longtime Americana-leaning artist started recording her new album Snakes & Saints, she learned firsthand the scary-but-rewarding process of letting go and giving the songs what they deserve—and the result is stunning. Available everywhere on July 31st , Snakes & Saints finds Blomquist, along with producers Nathan Johnson and J. Brandon Owens (ENJOYER), departing from her more traditional sound and exploring a musical world more akin to indie-pop, complete with lo-fi drum loops and polyphonic synth soundscapes; different, but never distracting from Blomquist’s heartfelt delivery of ten new original songs.
In writing Snakes & Saints, well before entering the studio with Johnson and Owens, Blomquist was already onto something unique and inventive in her songwriting approach. It’s Blomquist’s way with deep-diving into seemingly commonplace feelings and her knack for helping listeners grasp concepts in a whole new light that will stick with listeners upon hearing Snakes & Saints. Of course, those who have followed her story from the beginning are already aware of the fact that Blomquist writes songs filtered through with honesty and compassion, the concerns and complexities of everyday circumstance, the joys and surprises, and the difficulties and disappointment.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Secret,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. Backed by a slow and dreamy beat, Blomquist lends her quiet, angelic vocals to the track, creating a rich sonic soundscape. She blends her folk background and talent as a lyricist with synths, guitars and beats, resulting in a breezy and euphoric indie pop sound. While her love for acoustic music is still featured, it is more subtle here as she opts for a bigger sound that is easy to imagine as a radio hit.
Blomquist describes the inspiration behind the song:
“As a songwriter, I get to chase ideas and melodies and the idea ‘Nobody knows what we’re doing’ led me to write ‘Secret’. For me, this idea that ‘nobody knows what we are doing’ became very real when I became a parent. As a new parent, I read all the books I could get my hands on, trying to find the secret for how to raise my kids to be kind humans. Guess what I found out? There’s no recipe. No secret. Nobody really knows what we’re doing. We’re just doing the best we can each day and making adjustments as we go. ‘Secret’ is about wishing there was a secret to life and finding that there isn’t one. That might seem like bad news, but it’s actually good news because if there’s no secret, there’s nothing standing in your way. We are born with the ability to create and the ability to change. Change and creativity allow us to adapt. And that is pretty cool. In fact, I’m pretty sure every superhero story revolves around how someone decided to use change and creativity to make themselves and their world better. So in a way, learning that there is no secret in this life is the beginning of each of our own superhero origin stories. Go do it! Go do all the things you were put here on this earth to do and don’t let anything keep you from it.”
WATCH:
Snakes & Saints is due out July 31st.
Photo credit: Seiji Inouye
