With Long Day in the Milky Way, her eighth album, Kris Delmhorst wants to impart some hopeful messages for all of us immersed in this dreary world brought on by the pandemic. As with her previous album, Shotgun Singer, producer Sam Kassirer ((Laura Cortese, Lake Street Dive, Dustbowl Revival) returns to deliver, by now, his highly recognizable lush layered vocals and immersive instrumentation. Delmhorst delivers a heartfelt missive of life’s contradictions – frustration, transcendence, heartbreak, love – somehow finding beauty in the dark.
“No shame in the long game, look around and see that time is all we got,” she sings in “Wind’s Gonna Find a Way,” the album-opener and single, as background vocals and strings coalesce, seemingly forming clouds that eventually are pierced by bright glints of sunlight. “Slow hands in the shadowlands, patient fingers working at the patient knots.” In its tagline, the song recommends adopting the persistence of the wind: “Keep on pushing and you’ll find a way through.”
Delmhorst bonded with a trusted community of fellow songwriters at a retreat in New Hampshire and with her friends’ participation in mind, she crafted layer vocal parts that define the album’s sound. For some tracks, she arranged vocals on the same day the song was written, sitting in a circle with backing vocalists Rose Polenzani, Rose Cousins, and Annie Lynch on the floor of an old boathouse, giving the record a deeply collaborative feel. “I’ve always been a solitary writer, but over the years, developing songs with these women has become a treasured creative space,” says Delmhorst. “Having them there in the studio let me sing from a place of feeling supported, lifted up. It was so liberating to hear their voices alongside mine in real-time, to not have to carry the song alone.” The layers and textures are essential to the record’s sound as opposed to solos, as she explains, “I thought a lot about landscape, and about fabric. I was thinking about the variations in a handwoven cloth, or in a forest. It called for collective-minded, flexible, non-ego-driven players.”
In addition to those mentioned, the players are: Delmhorst (guitars, keys, cello, kalimba), Dietrich Strause (keys, acoustic guitar, trumpet, valve trombone, vibes), Sam Moss (electric guitar, violin), Mairi Chaimboul (harp), Jeremy Moses Curtis (electric and upright bass), Ray Rizzo (drums) and Kassirer(Wurlitzer on “Hanging Garden” and Hammond B-3 on “Call Off the Dogs”).
Delmhorst’s messaging is consistent throughout – be resilient because better things await. Here are just three examples, the first a verse from “Call Off The Dogs” – “Leave the story you can’t shake/Leave your pile of old mistakes/You’ll find a new one you can make/ You’ll find a new one/Call off the dogs, call off the dogs, call off the dogs.” This verse is from “Hanging Garden” – “I know – stranger in a strange land/Just keep holding onto my hand/ Look around it’s a world of wonders/Earth is above us heaven is under/See all the life that here that’s moving/See all the buzzing and blooming/Right as the rain and upside down/Way up here we could be anything.” Optimism rings through again in “Horses in the Sky “ – “Lightning on the sea, flashing green Don’t forget to see what can be Horses in the sky roll on by Don’t you close your eyes, Watch em fly, watch em fly Watch em fly, watch em fly.”
Surely Delmhorst has been favorably compared to artists as various as Anaïs Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, and Juana Molina – though she cites Rickie Lee Jones, in all her fearless joy and complexity, as her artistic north star. Whether inspired by Jones to write her own “Horses in the Sky” or not, and although she doesn’t usually include covers, she renders Jones’ “The Horses,” also released as a single, because she felt it resonated with the album’s theme of persistence, struggle, and hope. As such, Rickie Lee is symbolically presiding over the sessions, according to Delmhorst as “an honored guest, a patron saint.”
As described, this is a lush, lilting, layered record that at times sounds like a chorale. It takes a concentrated listen to appreciate the strength of Delmhorst’s lyrics. Therein lies even more beauty.
