Review - Bella White: Among Other Things
Playing a show in Milwaukee in February, Bella White introduced a song by saying it was a sad one. Then, “Well, they’re all sad songs.”
Photo by Bree Fish
That they are. So why would a few hundred mostly 20-somethings come out on a cold night to hear a young woman from western Canada sing sad, old-timey Appalachian songs?
Because they’re really good songs. Songs that give voice to the difficulties we all face in a way that’s both classic and yet undeniably of-the-moment. Listening to Bella White is like discovering Mother Maybelle Carter on TikTok.
Releasing April 21, White’s second album, Among Other Things, extends the stellar start to her career. She’s stocked the new album with observations carefully wrought and deeply thought – about love and loss, doubt and fear, and wonder about what life has brought and what is yet to come.
These songs brim with humanity, and with more questions than answers. She’s just 22, but wise enough to know how much she doesn’t know.
Album opener “The Way I Oughta Go” finds White contemplating lost love and her own shallow well of experience. “And now I’m so scared of what might happen / Maybe I'm just too young to know.”
White’s songs eschew the traditional verse chorus verse structure. They unfurl amid unfussy, relaxed arrangements, all the better to sharpen focus on the lyrics. The music – anchored in traditional country’s holy trinity of fiddle, upright bass and acoustic guitar, supported by piano and pedal steel – lets the lyrics take the lead with White’s keening, high lonesome voice, reminiscent at times of Hank Williams.
“Flowers on My Bedside” and “Break My Heart” both consider what is perhaps the most cruel of all rejections – indifference. In the former: “So, did you hear my voice / or was I just something to look at?” In the latter: “I was always waiting for it to all fall apart / You said you had one foot out the door from the start / So it's almost like you meant to break my heart.”
“Break My Heart” benefits from a jaunty, bouncy arrangement, sliced through with steel guitar and fiddle. It’s an up-tempo heartbreaker destined to be a concert singalong, and perfect as catharsis therapy for a breakup: Hit the highway with the windows down and sing that chorus into the wind.
Standout track “Dishes” is a meditative character study in which White considers the state of her relationship, which is decidedly less than passionate. “I don’t not want to kiss you.” He’s washing dishes, she’s reading a book on the couch as “The sun lay light on my shoulder.”
“And I don’t wanna ask myself / What it is that I think I’m doing here / I got so good at running far / from all the things that I set out to fear. / Like what I could be losing, I’m always losing / And I don’t wanna lose again / I don’t wanna lose you again.”
“Rhododendron” lands as gentle as a touch to a baby’s cheek, while the lyrics hit heavy. Written on Mother’s Day while missing her own mom, White sees a robin taking care of her babies while dodging predatory cats. As a young person, White’s naturally wrapped up in herself. But she considers the sacrifices she must be willing to make if she were to become a parent.
“Could I be a mother or a lover / to something greater than my own instinct to suffer? / And would a sheep run if she knew she was for the slaughter / or would she simply let her soft wool warm her daughter?”
White’s young career has been a critical success. But it’s tough to make it in music these days. She broke down the finances of the 17-date headlining tour that brought her to Milwaukee in a recent feature for Consequence of Sound. The bottom line: $2,000 in the black only because of a $5,000 grant from the Canadian government.
In “Numbers,” she considers the, well, numbers. “Well, you would think that I should feel happy / but the truth is I feel spent. / And the numbers they've been climbing / Just not enough to pay my rent.”
Among Other Things is an ideal soundtrack to a sad girl summer, and should help keep the numbers climbing... Maybe enough to buy the whole dang house.
Find out more about Bella White at the links below: