For Juliana Daugherty, the inner turmoil and wars that rage within us are just that: tumultuous and violent. The Charlottesville-based folk musician strays from popularly romanticized narratives about mental illness, speaking gently but uncompromisingly about it on her debut album Light, which was announced today with the release of its first single, “Player.”
“Player” charges with a bullheaded and relentless will for resolve. Its combination of shadowy muted guitar and steady percussion pulse under Daugherty’s crystalline vocals. Daugherty writes with chilling depth and easily enviable eloquence – with an MFA in poetry, she is a brilliant lyricist, and her words are cutting: “Curse all the light you see / Shots from the edge of some vast grief / I tried to find you there / I reach for your hand; I touch the air.”
About the song, Daugherty told NPR:
“When I wrote ‘Player,’ I was thinking about the experience of watching someone close to you disappear down a rabbit hole: Falling deeper and deeper into some state of chaos that’s out of their control and yours, which could be addiction or obsession or depression or most anything else. The song isn’t so much about a particular person as it is about the particular combination of feelings that I associate with this experience: The hurt of abandonment and the feeling of personal failure — failure to understand, failure to help — that contradicts that hurt and compounds it.”
Listen to “Player” above. Light is set for release on June 1.
