Music Review: Kelley Smith, ‘Moon Child’
The Minnesota artist’s debut EP captures the essence of being human, experiencing life, love and loss against a backdrop of a beautiful but indifferent natural world.
Kelley Smith Moon Child album artwork by David Hayward.
Minnesota native Kelley Smith came to songwriting a little later than some, releasing her debut album at age 40, but with musicians for parents, she’s lived with music all her life. It shows, too, in the quiet confidence of her vocals and musicianship and in her lyrics, which reveal an intuitive grasp of how to take ancient human themes and make the listener feel them in new ways.
Heartfelt without ever feeling mawkish or cliche, Moon Child is a rumination on love, loss and aging that celebrates the beauty and pain of nature’s implacable progression and the fleeting nature of our lives. Smith perfectly captures the human tendency to alternately struggle against and flow with the natural world and the passage of time. Her authentic, rootsy sound, falling somewhere between country, folk, bluegrass and old time music, is a pitch-perfect vehicle for the themes she explores in this five-song EP.
The title track sets the stage for Moon Child’s dreamlike sojourn through nature both peaceful and wild, inviting and treacherous. With a gentle rhythm, lilting melody and a lyrical pattern that evokes nursery rhymes, it’s essentially a lullaby. Like “Rock-a-bye Baby,” the soothing music is accompanied by some incongruously dangerous imagery at times: “Moon child, beware of what lurks round the bend / The night is for shadows, so lend me your hand.” But the darkness also holds peace, and potential, and “Moon Child” speaks to anyone who loves the night—dreamers and wide-awake night owls alike.
Kelley Smith. Photo credit: Jamie Prax.
The next track, “Marriage,” I can only describe as a Northern Minnesota love story. I’m not sure Smith is Duluth-based (though the musicians she’s tied to suggest she’s at least close). Regardless, this tune had the flavor of a Charlie Parr song, from the resonator-fueled instrumentation (excellently rendered by producer Joel Schwartz, who plays a number of instruments on the record) and percussion style (foot drum and tambourine) to the interweaving of nature and winter with enduring love in the lyrics: “Winter's comin' and we'll hunker down / Feed a fire here that won't burn out.” It’s rare to find a song about a long-term relationship that has momentum and excitement, but Smith pulls it off here.
“Dust” feels a bit like a sequel or epilogue to “Marriage,” though its story of enduring a death is more universal, describing the disorienting experience of anyone who’s lost any loved one: “The sun came up without you / The world keeps spinnin' like my head is spinnin' / It's all the same, and that's more than I can bear.” Despite the sorrow, there’s acceptance too: “From dust we come and, lord, to dust we will return / The peace, the pain of every season's change.” For someone navigating a recent devastating loss, every moment of this song is entirely accurate, and beautifully expressed.
“Tea and Whiskey” describes how new love feels for world-wise people, juxtaposing the maturity of lived experience (“There's no demandin' / Just you and me, tea and whiskey”) with the exhilaration of a new (or rekindled) relationship: “Oh, what a state I'm in / 'Cause I'm a child.” Even later in life, it suggests, there’s potential for love to remake someone: “Come on and shed this skin / We'll find ourselves again / We're findin' home.”
Kelley Smith. Photo credit: Trevor Tobin.
Moon Child closes with the most cryptic song of the collection, “I’ll Let Go.” The lyrics suggest a number of different possible stories: surrendering to love, coming back from hitting rock bottom, a midlife crisis, or simply learning to let go of expectations and accept life as it comes. Smith once again finds a unique and poetic way to express a universal theme that most people contend with at some point when they lose (or willingly give up) control of some part of their life or identity: “What do you do with an undoin' / Of what you thought you had to be?”
Kelley Smith should know, since she’s a living example of someone remaking themselves in midlife. With this stunning debut, she’s modestly announced herself as a Minnesota artist to watch and an exciting addition to our thriving Americana scene.
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
