{"id":19701,"date":"2024-03-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=19701"},"modified":"2024-03-18T18:28:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T18:28:04","slug":"sarah-jarosz-welcoming-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2024\/03\/19\/sarah-jarosz-welcoming-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"SARAH JAROSZ, welcoming the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Norman Warwick hears of <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SARAH JAROSZ, welcoming the future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she speaks to Paste online writer Mariel Fechik <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Jarosz was playing live in a small black box theatre in North Adams, Massachusetts. She\u2019d been commissioned to write a 30-minute composition for the FreshGrass Festival, and the resulting piece\u2014a song cycle about her mom\u2019s cancer and home state of Texas\u2014had the audience weeping in the dark. There\u2019s something in the way she uses her voice that is profoundly captivating\u2014there\u2019s a directness that conveys the nuance and clarity of her stories to the listener as though you are the only two people in the room. It hits whether you\u2019re hearing her live or hearing her for the first time through car speakers, her voice and the breeze from the open windows almost harmonizing with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The singer\/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is a spinner of stories. Newly Nashville-based (by way of New York), Jarosz has built a career writing the kind of big-hearted, big-sky songs that live in your chest from the second you hear them. Whether she\u2019s delivering her eerie, melancholy folk song cycle, twanging over a dark bluegrass melody (\u201cHouse of Mercy\u201d on 2016\u2019s Undercurrent<\/em>) or soaring through a banjo-forward Radiohead cover (\u201cThe Tourist\u201d on Follow Me Down<\/em>), Jarosz\u2019s sophisticated musicianship has drawn in listeners and collaborators with equal enthusiasm for over a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her newest record, Polaroid Lovers<\/em>, arrives after 2021\u2019s gentle Blue Heron Suite<\/em> and 2020\u2019s insular World On The Ground<\/em><\/a>, and it feels almost raucous in comparison. The latter two records were hushed and subtle, with vast but quiet internal worlds. But Polaroid Lovers<\/em> opens with windows-down, highway-driving electric guitar and drums. Lead single \u201cJealous Moon\u201d is pop-Americana at its most vital, with a wide open chorus and a driving pulse. \u201cOf all the tracks, that one scared me a little because it felt so different than anything I\u2019ve done before,\u201d Jarosz shares. \u201cWhen we recorded that one, I went back and forth about it being the first track. But, ultimately, there was no other way to open this record. There was some real freedom in embracing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Jarosz is more than a decade into her career (despite only being in her early 30s), but her sense of discovery and desire to evolve is stronger than ever. \u201cI think the ability to push forward comes from time, and having a more solidified and confident sense of myself and my musical journey,\u201d she explains. \u201cI don\u2019t think I would have been able to make this record 10 years ago or even five years ago; but I had this feeling that I know myself and my musical voice well enough at this point that I can take these risks and not be too concerned about losing myself in the process.\u201d Jarosz\u2019s confidence is palpable across Polaroid Lovers<\/em>, from the loping country shuffle of \u201cDays Can Turn Around\u201d to the contented mood of \u201cMezcal And Lime\u201d or even the broad-shouldered chord progressions of \u201cRunaway Train\u201d and \u201cTake the High Road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sense of ease was also a top priority during the project\u2019s development: \u201cWith this record, I was like, I\u2019m not even going to make plans to record until I have more than enough songs. You always hear about songwriters saying, \u2018Oh, I had 40 songs and I whittled it down to 10,\u2019\u201d Jarosz says. \u201cI\u2019ve never been in that position before, and so I thought, \u2018There\u2019s not a rush\u2014what if I actually do that?\u2019 I think living in Nashville for the first time had a big part in that.\u201d Though not a stranger to recording in Nashville, it was the first time Jarosz was living there after leaving her longtime home of New York City. \u201cLiving somewhere is different [than just visiting],\u201d she continues, \u201cand I was more open to co-writes this time around. There was a lot of freedom in that creative exploration of writing with Daniel, John Randall, Sarah Buxton, Natalie Hemby, Kristen Kelly and Gordie Sampson. It was so cool”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cCollecting\u201d feels like the right word to describe the record. Contrary to her past two albums, which were intimately personal and character driven, Polaroid Lovers<\/em> (right) <\/em><\/strong>feels a little like stumbling upon a stranger\u2019s photo album. The songs on the album are snapshots and vignettes, simultaneously detailed and ambiguous. \u201cI think that by not being hyper-specific about the who or the when or the what, it leaves space for listeners to determine what that means for them,\u201d Jarosz says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title itself is suggestive of the past, of nostalgia and viewing life through the haze of memory. \u201cIt evokes a kind of youthful newness. You can imagine a couple in a photo booth, or somebody\u2019s taking a Polaroid of them,\u201d Jarosz says. \u201cBut then on another level, the Polaroid idea was cool to me because each song is like a snapshot of a different place or time in a relationship or different people or different couples or different versions of yourself, even; it could be all of the above.\u201d It\u2019s a generous way to write songs, which can be intensely personal to their authors\u2014but Jarosz strikes the perfect balance between open-endedness and the specificity that is required to move people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in her intentional vagueness, there is a strong sense of place on Polaroid Lovers<\/em>, which has long been a hallmark of Sarah Jarosz\u2019s writing. Take, for example, some of the lyrics to \u201cColumbus & 89th,\u201d a song about Jarosz\u2019s move from NYC to Nashville: \u201cOnce in a while \/ The stars will align \/ At the corner of Columbus and 89th,\u201d she sings, and, \u201cI recall \/ Staying out with you \/ Til sunrise hit the Hudson.\u201d In those small, glittering details of street intersections and sunrise-watching spots, the song is tied firmly to a specific place and to Jarosz\u2019s grief in leaving it. Despite that, the intersection could be in any city, the river could be any body of water. For me, it immediately became Chicago\u2014Belmont & Sacramento, or Kimball & Wrightwood. Watching the sunrise over Lake Michigan at Montrose Harbor. I left my Chicago home for Detroit in 2022 with no small amount of anxiety, and I tell Jarosz how long it took me to realize that it was a trauma in many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of that song,\u201d she says. \u201cFor a long time after recording that song, I couldn\u2019t listen back to it without crying. It was almost like I processed the emotion in the song before I processed it myself. I think it\u2019s a good example of what I try to do with my songs, being fluid and honest with the emotion and being detailed, but not so much that other people can\u2019t find their own story within it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She continues, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where it is\u2014the feeling of having to leave a place when you don\u2019t want to or when it\u2019s forced is a really intense human experience and emotion. I mean, in my instance, I\u2019m extremely lucky. I had another place to go, and it\u2019s not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but still that\u2019s when it becomes related to what you\u2019re saying about a sense of place and home and what home means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I really started to explore that concept until A World On The Ground<\/em> with Texas. It was like I had to have time before time away from living there to write about it. And it\u2019s similar with this\u2014it was a whole year after leaving New York that I was even processing these emotions in songs. When I was younger, I didn\u2019t think about sense of place so much, but now it\u2019s something that keeps coming up a lot in my songs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That physical sense of place is so often directly linked to the metaphysical foundations of our senses of self\u2014places are tied to people, and so in turn, to the sound of someone\u2019s voice or the feeling of someone\u2019s arm around your shoulders. The way dusk settles over a certain backyard while laughter floats across the breeze. \u201cMy favorite records enhance my days or my outlook, whether it\u2019s that they kind of confirm something that I was already feeling, or whether it\u2019s that it opens another window of like, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s some light here.\u2019 There\u2019s comfort in that, and I think that\u2019s all I could really hope for someone to experience with my record,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something almost sacred about discovering an artist when you\u2019re a teenager, when the aimless nighttime drives with the windows down feel akin to ritual\u2014it becomes even more so when you follow that artist through the next decade and the sound of their voice through your car speakers is a familiar comfort even when you\u2019re hearing their newest record for the first time. Polaroid Lovers<\/em> offers that comfort, even as if it offers forward motion. When I listen to this version of Sarah Jarosz, I am both the teenager in the polaroid snapshot and the adult driving home from work, existing all at once and so fleetingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something in the way she uses her voice that is profoundly captivating\u2014there\u2019s a directness that conveys the nuance and clarity of her stories to the listener as though you are the only two people in the room<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,45,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-music","category-performing-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19701"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20063,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19701\/revisions\/20063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}