Premiere: Lindsay Lou Shares New Cowl of Billy Swan’s “I Can Assist”

New Album Queen of Time Out September twenty ninth by way of Kill Rock Stars Nashville

Aug 31, 2023

By Caleb Campbell

Nashville-based singer/songwriter Lindsay Lou has been steadily constructing her place within the Americana world, enjoying together with her bluegrass outfit, Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys, and the Michigan folks supergroup Candy Water Warblers. On this time, she’s toyed with the numerous completely different iterations of roots music, starting from bluegrass, soul, gospel, blues, and Appalachian folks. But, regardless of that wide-ranging stylistic imaginative and prescient, the weather that almost all outline her music stay deeply private; her lustrous vocals and resonant storytelling are essentially the most outstanding throughlines to her work.

That confessional and religious aspect stays on her forthcoming file, Queen of Time, out September twenty ninth on Kill Rock Stars’ new Nashville imprint. The file was reportedly impressed by a hallucinogenic ritual she undertook within the aftermath of the lack of her grandmother, the top of her marriage, and the upheaval of Covid. As she describes, “I noticed a literal manifestation of the sacred female, and had this profound sense that I used to be meant to embody it.”

Lou has already shared a collection of singles from the file this 12 months, all of which have been originals, however as we speak she is again with a brand new cowl of Billy Swan’s “I Can Assist,” premiering with Underneath the Radar.

Lou’s model of “I Can Assist” strips again a lot of the guitar soloing and freewheeling power of the 1974 authentic and as a substitute opts for a way more breezy and tender rendition, carrying the observe with mild, swinging rhythms and easygoing guitar strums. Although she colours the observe’s latter half with some guitar soloing of her personal, she retains a heat, easy air, matching the pleasant lyrics together with her singular pastoral charms. As she explains, that empathetic undercurrent is crucial to the music, and is strictly why she selected to cowl it.

“My Grandma Nancy put music into two classes: bubble gum, or Bob Dylan,” Lou explains. “She’d declare that the latter truly has one thing to say and makes use of music to say it. I’m no Dylan. Not by a protracted stretch. I didn’t even write this music. However, I selected it for this file as a result of, as you will have seen, I’ve a number of issues to say. I’m dispelling lies, as a lot for my very own profit as for whoever is listening. This music directs its gaze on the ‘self-made individual’ lie. A buddy launched me to Billy Swan’s rendition throughout a time when friendship was actually getting me by means of to the subsequent day. Grief is actual. Grief is love with nowhere to go. The one approach out is thru and we get by means of it collectively or under no circumstances.”

Take a look at the music and video beneath, out in every single place now. Queen of Time is out September twenty ninth by way of Kill Rock Stars Nashville.