Riley Skinner - Surrender
Even in my darkest moments, I hope you know, there is a spark here.
Riley Skinner’s new record Surrender encourages us to love ourselves for who we are and who we might become.
She describes this record that, “...embracing myself fully as a queer person has been an act of surrendering fully to who I am. It’s meant allowing myself to fall apart and feel out of control, but also to embrace that place of chaos and find some ease and joy there.”
Lyrically and sonically, she wanders on Surrender and is never lost, a journey for the sake of itself where the destination is exactly where you are right now, but you’re just facing the dawn of a new tomorrow. The record showcases her range as a songwriter, Skinner departs from the textures of her previous work and here she glides between moods sonically and lyrically. Slow, ethereal ballads hover just off the surface of a rugged earth before they drift away and reveal the grit and the groove. The moves feel subtle, intentional, and never out of place. She allows the listener access to the most intimate parts of herself. She tells the story of what was, is, and will become from where those three overlap. No moment exists in a vacuum, all is connected and illuminated by a simple spark of hope.
The band around Skinner builds the record a sturdy foundation. Colleen Burns and Shannon van der Reck fill out the rhythm section and seem expertly to hold back the weight of the world and keep the center clear for Riley to unspool on each track. The record features additional guitars from Cooper Stoulil, flute from Margo Ramsay, and pedal steel from Zack Warpinski. The band embeds a sort of sonic grit on Carnal Otherness and Friend. They bring power that’s never overpowering. Then, deftly switch gears on tracks like Surrender and Swallow Song, a song which opens to a minimalist, graceful vignette until it crescendos with flutes and chorus into a wall of sound and wonder and memory that crashes softly back onto its own shores. The band wanders with Riley, all comfortably restless and completely steady, never settling on a single sound but always choosing the right one.
I may not ever be in the right place at the right time, but I have something worth holding onto
01 - Dirty
Great song for when you can’t tell if your searching for yesterday or tomorrow, but know that it’s right around the corner anyways
05 - You Go a Long Way
Great song for when the heat of the day has been unbearable, for when you can finally slink out into the night and feel reborn in the cool silence
08 - Guarded
Great song for when you see yourself in the mirror and recognize the person you will become
** Some of the writing in this doesn’t belong to me - I lifted some lines from Riley’s record and if you want to figure out what came from the record well you better go listen to it cause you’re done reading this.
