From her debut Strangers Who Knew Each Other’s Names, her EP East Twenties and her second full-length Broken Into Pieces, produced by Nigel Stonier (Thea Gilmore), Dressner has taken her experience in musical theater and morphed into an acclaimed singer-songwriter, her music delivered with a conversational ease that often seems as if she is reading from an intimate letter set to music.
“They’re like letters you write but don’t send,” explains Dressner, laughing, “except I publish them.”
Her latest stirring effort, Coffee at the Corner Bar (released September 4th), is an album consisting of her most accomplished collection of songs to date. Along with a set of new original music, the album includes a cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love” and a co-write with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. Produced by Dressner’s husband, Paul Goodwin (an accomplished singer-songwriter in his own right), and mixed by Louie Lino (Resonate Music, Nada Surf) in Austin, Texas, the new album is a collection of beautiful, nostalgic indie-folk songs about romance, grief, and self-reflection — from opening track “Nyack” recounting childhood visits to the upstate New York village, to “Pretend,” a musing on a failed romance in Hamburg, Germany where she lived as a 22-year-old au pair, to “Losing You” which unpacks the grief she felt over the loss of her mother — Dressner documents a vibrant life filled to the brim with enriching experiences, and shares these deeply introspective stories through brutally honest yet accessible songs.
Always writing from first-hand experience, Dressner hesitates to share the people her songs are directly written about in order to shield them from embarrassment and herself from backlash. The songs are filled with both distinct detail and universal feelings about betrayal, love, frustration, and loss. The stories take on a life of their own, each one an invitation to be tried on and lived in by the listener.
Since moving to the United Kingdom, Dressner has performed at the Green Man Festival, Secret Garden Party, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cluny2, O2 Academy Islington, Norwich Arts Centre, Cambridge Junction, Night & Day among countless other venues and has shared stages with the likes of Emily Barker, Simone Felice, Kirsty McGee, Juan Zelada, Lucy Wainwright Roche & Fossil Collective, The East Pointers, Polly Paulusma, Irish Mythen, and Ezio.
Glide is thrilled to premiere the video for “Midnight Bus” (below) featuring Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, a striking collage of voices that rekindle the rainy day indie of Aimee Mann and Beth Orton.
“Paul Goodwin (my husband and producer of Coffee At The Corner Bar) and I met Matthew eight years ago at a local pub. Matthew & I are both from NYC but now live in Cambridge, “describes Dressner. “I had only been living here for some months and was very excited to meet another New Yorker who could understand the true meaning of the word “bagel.”
“We were both thinking about our individual experiences at night in NYC. Weirdly, we had both encountered guys standing on the sidewalk at night with telescopes, offering views to passersby. (Matthew’s experience was outside a venue in Iowa while on tour, but still, what are the chances?)
Photo by Elly Lucas
