Charlottesville, VA-based folk duo Lowland Hum went through a slew of emotions over the past year and a half. Along with navigating the global pandemic, the married couple lived through a natural disaster and their first pregnancy.
That slew of conflicting emotions came to be heard all over their latest, At Home (a fairly apt title). The album opens on “Where Are You,” a song with sparse arrangements – little more than acoustic guitar and piano for most of the song – allowing for Lauren Goans‘ voice to take front and center. The result is highly emotive and beautiful, a feature of most of the record. The song came to her in a dream where she found her partner Daniel playing it to a parking lot full of fans. Waking up from the dream she grabbed her phone and recorded what she could remember from it, including the first verse which made it to the final song verbatim.
Just as powerful as Lauren’s delivery Daniel complements her perfectly when he’s front of the mic as well, his Baritone sounding more than a little like Ben Folds, on songs like “Not My Kind Of World.” Lyrically, the band manages to say so much without the distraction of a lot of instrumentation. A song like “2082,” partially about letting your music survive long into the future, a line like “I can love you like I can’t love me,” delivered lightly, with combined voices, and not having to compete over drums and loud guitars is simply searing. The record ends on the piano ballad “New Day,” another powerful track that is bound to become a Lowland Hum show staple for years to come, part lullaby, part anthem, the duo sings about moving on to a new day with help from others.
The two admitted recently that they found they were pretty horrible at domestic life, being off the road for the first time in years due to the pandemic. Oddly enough, the beauty, the intelligence and the raw emotions pouring out of At Home, would have made for the perfect quarantine soundtrack.
Photo credit: Eric Kelly
