Mali Velasquez, Bloomsday, Dead Gowns

When Nashville-based singer-songwriter Mali Velasquez traded her Texas panhandle home for the verdant foothills of Tennessee, she did so with a newfound perspective that mirrored her environment, culminating in the lushly raw edge of her folk-rooted indie rock. Wistfully openhearted and incisive, Velasquez tips the fulcrum between reflection and remedy with melody-forward unction and lyrical tenderness. Her 2023 debut, I’m Green, is a perennial introspection into the wild animal of young adulthood and the renewing realization that the person we’re most often seeking permission from, crucially, is ourselves.

“I know you’re delicate / But so am I,” sings Velasquez on “Medicine,” her voice a subtext of her disposition, warbled yet controlled, uncertain but sharpening over a fuzz of guitars that crash into epiphanic clarity. Like rounding a mountain road to that first sunlit outlook, Velasquez’s vocals begin to hit you: building, winding, closing in, and then opening, the expanse unfiltered and strikingly primal.

Lead single “Tore” sees similar themes of biting candor as Velasquez confronts a tendency towards shame and self-sabotage over distorted brass and a steady, pastoral groove.

“Being comfortable in my skin is something that feels out of reach a lot of the time…What all of these songs are about is my relationship with myself, but also the relationship of ‘self’ as a reflection of my relationships to other people.”

I’m Green sees these familiar feelings of discomfort as an opportunity for release, the through-line being both the hesitancy that precedes the acceptance and the acceptance itself. It’s a restorative exhalation of stored energies and a practice in stretching the limbs to that which we’ve deemed unreachable.

This through-line is never clearer than on opening track “Bobby,” which sees a high school-aged Velasquez attempting to catalog memories following the loss of her mother. Computerized blips and glimmers cut through the sparse guitarwork like bytes of fleeting recollection, the data of hospital bed imprints and the sacred nature of shared phrases flooding back in a crescendoed wash of swelling percussion.

“Getting these songs out has been really healing for me. Before, the way I was grieving was just kind of holding it all in, waiting for it to release. These songs have given me a new perspective on grief. At one time, I didn’t think anything good could come from this. There’s nothing left of my mom on the planet, and that can be super strange to talk about, but I do feel like there are little pieces of her living in these songs, which is very comforting to me.”

In reaching for healthier coping mechanisms, Velasquez realized a reborn appreciation for nature and nurtured a more disciplined love for oil painting.

“I love to paint, and I love to paint outside, especially coming from such an arid place. Moving here to Nashville, I remember saying out loud, all the time—it’s so green! The cover art for ‘Bobby’ is a photo of my grandparents holding me as a baby that I painted, and that’s something that I absolutely want to keep doing, is just painting old photos.”

She also found producer Josef “Jos” Kuhn (Samia, Annie DiRusso, Venus & the Flytraps, Hannah Cole), who, after seeing a video of Velasquez performing an early version of “Bobby,” reached out about recording the song. The pair hit it off, and recording one song quickly became recording an album. “It’s been so helpful with Josef, because I would come to him with the songs, and it’d be us sitting on the couch or me sending a voice memo and his response would be so unexpected, and welcoming, and appreciative, which is really new for me.”

On closing track “Death Grip,” Velasquez muses about the passage of time and whether her efforts to reconcile the turmoil of a long-term relationship are futile. Like grief, her outward frustrations often turn inward as a mirror and as a chance to reflect on her longest relationship to date: the relationship she has with herself. I’m Green is the result of these reflections becoming meditations on the transformative power of both loss and shame and what emerges when we allow ourselves to surrender to their potential.

Bloomsday is the tender, cerebral project of the New York-based Iris James Garrison (they/them). The way they write songs sits somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they’re an ode to things that are good no matter how small. Bloomsday’s new record, Heart of the Artichoke (2024, Bayonet Records), is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure. Like their 2022 debut Place to Land, the work here is threaded with warmth; it’s simmering, crisp and deeply human, encapsulating the present moment. 

Since the project’s inception in 2019, Bloomsday has toured the US extensively, including supporting Becca Mancari, Joe Vann, and Charlotte Cornfield, sets at Hopscotch Music Festival and SXSW, and playing with Courtney Barnett, Bonny Doon, Katie Kirby, Babehoven, Hovvdy, and others. Their music has been featured on NPR New Music Friday, Nylon, FLOOD, and Paste, among other publications. Their tracks have been placed on editorial playlists including Spotify’s Fresh Finds, Lorem, All New Indie, and more.

Dead Gowns is the project of Portland, ME songwriter, Geneviève Beaudoin. Her latest collection, the How EP, is a confident declaration of self-acceptance. Written in January 2021, during a period of personal and professional flux, Beaudoin found herself taking stock of what to hold onto. Having been immersed in the recording process of a separate Dead Gowns full length, these songs rose to the surface out of necessity and quickly took on a life of their own.

Ideas of shedding, and the power and tenderness required to do so, are evoked again and again over the course of this collection. ‘Renter Not A Buyer’ is the cheekiest of the tracks, but also the most indelible. The chorus is a veritable earworm, as catchy as it is damning. It’s a multi-faceted exploration of the shells we inhabit, the work involved in preserving them, and how they so often fail us. The narrator, hungover and late to work, tumbles down the stairs from an apartment too drafty to be habitable. Bleeding from the mouth, she tries to kiss her date goodbye, avoiding a larger reality in her body. Beaudoin’s own experiences with endometriosis inform this exploration: she sets concealed pain in direct opposition to the demands of saving face. This process is invariably fraught and she is the first to recognize the absurdity of trying at all.

The rest of the EP is less fixated on the pitfalls of how one presents to the world. Though Beaudoin first wrote these songs as unspoken dialogues, she sees them now as affirmations intended for herself. ‘How You Act’ is a reclamation of agency, empowering the narrator to forgive and accept: “Yeah it’s messy, grow up your heart” illustrates this revelation, with Beaudoin’s voice ringing out unaccompanied for a brief moment of quiet triumph. ‘Change Your Mind’ is a moving celebration of this new life, emerging with gusto from the past. Set atop swelling strings and the warm swagger of a Fender Rhodes, the track’s affirmation feels earned and regal. But it’s in ‘Real Life’ that Beaudoin realizes that there’s no fixed point here. She must make peace with the fact that her desire for change will always run alongside a past that won’t entirely stay past.

On the EP’s one-year anniversary, Dead Gowns has partnered with Vinyl Me, Please for the first vinyl pressing of the collection, with new songs ‘Kid 1,’ ‘Castine,’ and ‘Kid 2’ closing out the B-side. Rather than detract from the central narrative, the new additions fill out the frame.

Throughout How, now in its expanded form, Beaudoin deftly traces the molting process, from the darkly comic wriggling of the larval state to the transcendence of uncalloused being. The sense of visitation in these moments – both hushed and universal – reiterates that new life begins by accepting, rather than discarding, one’s past messes.