Little shards of sunshine peek through on Emily Hurd’s new Long Lost Ghosts, a moving acoustic folk-pop project that asks hard questions and doesn’t settle for easy answers. Recorded on a vintage grand piano at Chicago’s King Size Sound Labs, the album showcases Hurd’s finely wrought way with the language and with a story. She explores with a wanderer’s nostalgia, a writer’s eye for the just-right image, and a lost lover’s bittersweet reverie across this 10-song cycle. But while Hurd’s hopefulness is certainly tempered by these hard knocks, it remains. From the title track’s open-road vistas to the homey contentment of the closing “Easy Call,” this is an album that combines the troubadour’s specificity of Lyle Lovett and the gritty truth telling of Steve Earle. Spinning it together is Hurd’s ardent eye and clarion voice — a lasting symbol of this battered but unbroken optimism.
‘Half Notes’ are quick-take thoughts on music from Something Else! Reviews, presented whenever the mood strikes us.
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