Premiere | The Stubborn Lovers: Gramercy
We’ve got another new single to premiere for you this week. Today’s tune is from the Americana group, The Stubborn Lovers. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the band is made up of Jenny Taylor, bassist and the primary songwriter of the group, Mandy Allan, singer/guitarist and Michael “Pearl” Nelson on drums. Their upcoming album, Come a Reckoning is out on November 18th, but today we’ve got their latest single, “Gramercy” to share with you.
Photo by Chelsea Donoho
A companion song to “You Take Tacoma, I’ll Take My Chances,” both songs refer to Taylor’s ex. Taylor had this to say about the song, “I didn’t intentionally sequence the album this way, but this song is about the same ex I thought I’d just given the permanent brushoff in ‘Tacoma.’ This one was written several years later, while we were all living with the results of the 2016 presidential election and wondering just how big a dumpster fire the world would become. (Little did we know.) It’s sort of about when you’re young and poor and everything sucks, but you’re so in love that none of it matters. The title refers to Gramercy Park, the Manhattan neighborhood where we first lived together—and let me tell you, when you’re young and in love in New York City, the world is magical despite any poverty or hardship. Ultimately, though, this song is about forgiveness and reconciliation, about how as you get older and the world starts falling to pieces around you, you want to reach out to people you once loved but have grown distant from, and pull them close to you again. Musically, I was aiming for some sort of cross between gospel and Memphis soul, but I’m not sure we got there.”
I’ll disagree and say that The Stubborn Lovers did get there with this song. With clever Biblical references hidden throughout, “the main one here is Biblical again, this time to the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” and a nod to Kris Kristofferson’s, “Me and Bobby McGee” with the opening line of the song, “We pulled out of Baton Rouge… with silver dollars in our shoes.” You’ll need to listen to the song more than once to fully appreciate this “loping waltz” and its clever lyrics, the soaring vocals from Mandy and the unexpected addition of the saxophone by Dana Robbins.
“Gramercy” is out everywhere on November 4th, but we’ve got a preview of the single for you today. You can listen to it below.