By the time Haley Heynderickx concludes that “there’s an artistry to going away” on her mesmerizing sophomore LP, she’s already provided ample evidence. As she did on her 2018 debut I Need to Start a Garden, the Portland-based singer-songwriter recognizes the stress and monotony of day-to-day life, but strives to find beauty within it: mirroring natural cycles rather than the frantic rhythms of city life, observing and communing with their most minute details, allowing her songs to get carried away in thought and whimsy. That’s where Haley Heynderickx’s music takes us; that’s the escape, and she’s a playful and compelling enough artist to make us feel like it’s a journey worth pursuing. “Oh, how sweet is the daylight/ When no one is around/ You take the soft road/ And you face the world like/ Someone is asking you to grow,” she sings on ‘Ayan’s Song’, and Seed of a Seed seeks to conjure the same warmth. It’s a gentle invitation as much as a challenge to the self.
Per the album’s sequencing, Heynderickx heads into the difficult part, the self-confrontation, first. She does so in quite a literal and instantly captivating way: ‘Gemini’ places her in a room with a former version of herself, and so the past, not some idealized vision of the future, becomes the driving force for growth – even if it just means pulling over to take a look at a purple clover. Instead of reintroducing us to Heynderickx’s delicate folk with some nimble fingerpicking, the strumming evokes a bubbling sense of anxiety, which softens – like her attitude towards that woman in the corner – as her band joins in. This woman, too, is tasked with awakening emotion and therefore artistry: “All the haggard things I didn’t want to feel/ She peels me back like I’m her cabbage.” It’s the reason why, on the mid-album highlight ‘Redwood (Anxious God)’, the singer is able to align herself with the water, the walnut tree, the pebble in the little stream, relaying their wisdom: no longer a person out of context, but deeply connected.
Songs like ‘Gemini’ and ‘Redwood (Anxious God)’ take intricate paths, but elsewhere the album eases us into what the former calls “a process” – of slowing down, letting the light seep in, believing in things you couldn’t. Over the uneasy stomp of ‘Foxglove’, it comes in the form of a plea: “Oh daydream, die slow.” As the song gets bigger, the cello (played by Caleigh Drane), so often an instrument of mourning, helps amplify the urgency. But the title track is quiet and unfussy in its longing, imagining a fortune no more complicated than “a glass of wine” and “a hand next to mine.” ‘Sorry Fahey’ frames the aging body as a vessel of gratitude for the small things, from “your old black cat” to the “kettle making you tea” (even when the cat’s asshole and the tea, well, ginger). Even ‘Mouth of a Flower’, which reminds us of humanity’s tendency to recklessly extract from nature, takes more delight in jaunting through its beautiful imagery, realizing that it, too – the hummingbird, the tide – “take, take, take.” There’s a deliberate rhythm to it; it seems to exist in that distant world where “man and bird had used to sing.” Now, “not even little bugs want to talk with us, us, us” – except perhaps through our own projected fears.
Seed of a Seed makes several references to ghosts – not as spirits of the dead, though they may still haunt old, empty spaces. The first one appears in ‘Gemini’; maybe it’s also that something “telling me you can’t be alone” on ‘Spit in the Sink’ or that someone on ‘Ayan’s Song’. Maybe it’s the thing sapping our creative energy: the reason “everyone around me is getting tired/ And everyone around me is trying to write.” On ‘Swoop’, Heynderickx’s affirmation turns to existential questioning: “Is there an artistry to feeling this way?/ Is there an artistry in the day to day to day to day?” And when she repeats that line one last time, you’d be mistaken for not hearing the preposition, a twist that would end the album on a startlingly grim note: There’s an artistry going away. With such a gap between albums, and so many things in our daily lives dissuading from the actual present, you can assume that sentiment at one point rang true. The artistry, however – the word Heynderickx ultimately stresses – is all but dwindling, not for her anyway. And if, more broadly, it seems like it is, she’ll use her gift to alter our perception.
