Lamplight // Lamplight LP

This is the debut record by Lamplight, an indie folk artist from Virginia, USA, released on the country's long-established label Western Vinyl in March 2024.

Contains 9 indie folk rock songs.

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12" black vinyl. Ask us for digital files.

tracklist:

1. Play
2. Confrontation 04:43
3. stillness
4. Lamplight 02:48
5. Call Your Mom 04:59
6. House Rules 03:52
7. Soft blue
8. Empathy
9. Honey

Text excerpt by Western Vinyl:

"In the sway of a rural breeze, Ian Hatcher-Williams' vocals soothe and enchant the listener on his self-titled debut album as Lamplight, which recounts his odyssey from a child raised in a Virginia cult, to a burned out tech worker in New York, and then back to Virginia, happily married to his childhood friend. Throughout the album, Hatcher-Williams explores identity as it relates to where a person is from and evolves with where they live, and how that facet of self is further compounded by the amount of agency one has over where they call home. To some extent, Lamplight is about learning when to take the reins, and when to let go—discovering what parts of yourself should be pruned, so new branches can grow.

[...]

The dreamlike Lamplight feels at once familiar and new; it's a room you recognize but can't quite place, the fragment of a memory that you can't pin down. There's love but also panic attacks, realizations and reckonings, questionings alongside resignations, and confrontation as well as avoidance. With a brushed and skittering 6/8 shuffle, opening track "Play" emerges over the horizon like a sunrise full of hope and potential, as Hatcher-Williams contemplates the uncertainties of returning to Appalachia. The album's title track, in a few spare lines, traces his and his partner's history from meeting at age 11, to getting married and moving to the big city, and then back to Virginia for the next stage of their lifelong relationship. In the song he weeps, knowing that one way or another their remarkable cosmic braid will come to an end. A drunken moment in a piss-soaked Brooklyn bar bathroom led to the idea for lead single "Call Your Mom"—a song that beautifully articulates the modern struggle to keep in touch with those who matter to us most. As the list of people he's drifted away from grows, so does the paralyzing inertia that keeps him from reaching out to reconnect.

Lamplight winds down with a lump-in-the-throat tenderness and spartan clarity on "Honey." Initially written to express sentiments of support and acceptance from his father, the song ends up feeling like Hatcher-Williams' loving message to the listener: "Be kind to yourself. I'm here if you wanna talk." By the end of the album, you get the sense that Ian Hatcher-Williams has learned that he's not the dogma that over-promised and under-delivered, and he's not the youthful ambition that led him to the brink of self-destruction. He's a soft machine with limitations, improvising and adapting, seeking balance and a sense of place, just like everyone else. "

Artist: Lamplight

Label: Western Vinyl

CAT No.: WV262