Reviews

Artist:Lori Triplett
Album: When The Morning Comes
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.loritriplett.com/

Based in Nashville, this is her third full album since making her debut in 2009, opening the piano and thumping drum beat of 'The Wishing Star', one of two songs that come from learning about her mother's diagnosis with breast cancer and navigating the complex and dark feelings that it brought, a number aglow with seeing her mother's strength ("She is no quitter/heart is bigger, as big as I am small… She's an early riser, master disguiser of her pain and heartache") and the feelings of wanting to help but also helplessness ("if I could somehow make things alright/But I'm just the wishing star").

The other is the five-minute 'Sanctuary' with its backdrop keyboard drone and piano notes, sung in her mother's voice ("Take it one day at a time…This old house is standing tall, but my body is feeling small…it don't seem to matter how I look today/These four walls are all I got…All I want is another chance, another go around, different song and dance").

Sandwiched in-between, another drum thumping walking rhythm, 'The Good In Us' is a reminder to try to see past our differences with other people and find the good within them and yourself.

A simple acoustic guitar, piano and mellotron arrangement to its tumbling melody, 'All I'm Letting Go Of' ponders on what comes after you let go, be it of love, heartache or the past, did it disappear, "Did it move just up the street into someone else's life?" or Does it just take a lap and come right back around?"

Tinkling notes and a repeated dappled drum pattern carry 'Mexico', the story of friends attempting to help someone move on after a broken relationship as recounted through her eyes ("I'm with some friends who know how to forget about life for a while/Try not to care how I look in a bikini/Pretend to read a good book") but with the ache of loss still lingering ("All these blue skies and mountain ranges are beautiful but nothing changes/you're back home and I'm on my own") as they wonder "How far do I have to go before our memories fade/like when I'm looking out the plane window down at the landscape?"

On a similar theme of having somewhere to go to escape, physically or mentally, as we try to cope, a breeze leads into the fingerpicked guitar and dark piano notes of 'Hollow White Oak' about a real-life 300 year old white oak tree on a historical 500 acre plantation outside of Nashville . Then, again dealing with loss, arranged around a circling guitar riff and her wistful, pure vocals, the reflective 'Things You Said To Me' is pretty much what it says ("Bet you never moved to Denver like you said you would/Bet you never read that book I gave to you/Heard you turned around when it got dark, you always quit when things got hard…I remember how it felt to sleep alone/Best thing I ever did was leave…there are things worth fighting for when the morning comes/And there are times when letting go hurts less than holding on"), her voice echoing away in the refrain.

A more uptempo jog, 'Light from Another Room' is about moving on from the hurt and darkness and while the future may seem "a one-way, dead end street", the belief that in "the darkness of my deepest blues/There's a light from another room".

A meditative, introspective piano ballad with traces of Stevie Nicks and keyboard swirls, 'Night Rider' is about those moments when you find yourself questioning who you are and the brevity of life, feeling inadequate ("Living my life like a fantasy/No armor, no suit, every single night a new shade of blue") but pushing through to be comfortable in your own skin and determined to find your way out of the despond and go 'dancing in the stars', that sentiment of living life to the fullest underpinning the final cosmic floating piano ballad track, 'Here For a Minute' with its musing on time ("Some nights I stare up at the glowing moon, think about life before I was alive") and its message to not take loved ones for granted ("we're only here for a minute, so say I love you") and its parting sense of being one with the universe ("I slept in 'til I woke up on my own/And finally felt the promise I'm not alone").

Summed up in a nutshell, it's an album about the vagaries, upsets and loss that life can bring but one that's suffused with the hope that, as the title say, dawn will come and hope can bloom again.

Mike Davies

Previous	Next
My Life Story: Loving You Is Killing Me	Lori King & Junction 63: Straight From The Heartland

Recent Reviews

Hollow White Oak

Fatea Showcase Sessions

The Fatea Showcase Sessions are a series of downloads featuring acts that we've really enjoyed and think that more people should get the chance to hear.

Corsair is the current session and features 16 fantastic artists check out the website to find out more about them and download your copy

www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk for all the artist information.

Visit The FATEA Archive!