With her new song, Genevieve Dawson offers up a precious gift.
A pause.
You will surely be busy doing something when you click play or when the song starts up in your queue. But, you will also just as surely….pause. And, feel as if you are standing still while the world continues to buzz around you.
Such is the hushed grace of Mountain, the first single from Dawson’s debut album Letters I Won’t Send. WtMM is proud to premiere the single and accompanying video, both of which are set for public release tomorrow, February 7.
An Edinburgh-born, London based singer-songwriter with folk roots, Dawson draws heavily on jazz traditions for Mountain’s arrangement and meditative groove. Close your eyes, and the song has the feeling of a jazz standard sung in a low-slung club below street level, glasses clinking in the background.
Melodic piano chords repeat throughout, joined by a richly toned upright bass, sharp side-stick drumming and brushed cymbals, soft horns, and textured backing strings. Dawson’s voice arcs in with intimacy and warmth, somehow both immediate and distant — an apt style for lyrics that explore love and loss and being open (resigned?) to both.
In the chorus, Dawson sings “Like a mountain that holds an echo deep inside of it / That’s how I hold your voice like a song I can’t forget.” Relish the pause. This is a beautiful song — and Dawson’s is a beautiful voice — to get lost in and to remember.
*****
WtMM thanks Genevieve Dawson for premiering this lead single with us. Mountain officially drops tomorrow, February 7. Her debut album, Letters I Won’t Send, is due out May 1 on Hertha Records.
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