With a Captive Breath

Sweeping Promises - Safe Now

I have a hangup about band names.

I won’t listen to a band if I don’t like their name. I also won’t listen to a band if a bunch of people tell me that I need to. And since my purpose with this newsletter is to only highlight music that I think is good, I don’t want to sully this experiment in sharing by mentioning any of those groups.

Because of this personal bug, I’ve never heard Lira Mondal’s voice before, because I’d have never listened to the band she was in prior to Sweeping Promises. But I like this name a lot. It’s a fitting name for our current moment. What life is now, what life will become, and what life can be are all matters of sweeping promises that we’re telling ourselves or are being told about how everything abnormal now will be fixed, whatever you determine broken to be. And because that name is intriguing, when someone I trust mentioned this album, I gave it a listen. I expected it to be good and catchy enough to hold my attention in a year where I can barely give anything more than a moment’s focus because the world seems to be in a hyperdrive of chaos and daily new calamities.

Lira Mondal has a voice you will not be able to resist. It is assured, mastered, and effortless. It is grand, yet it is also intimate. And while the songs on this album feel familiar enough to anyone who knows their Rough Trade catalog, this voice will likely startle most listeners, even the jaded ones who expect they’ve heard it all before.

God, what an amazing and comforting, hopeful sound it is. This is a perfect rejuvenation of spirit for the beginning of this week.

I’m linking to Bandcamp to encourage you to give this great new band some digital money, since the vinyl sold out immediately.

Like what I’m doing here? Let me know by suggesting it to someone else that may like it. Not into this song? Stick around for the next one, it may be what you didn’t know you needed! Remember, there are only two genres of music here at SERMONS!: good and bad, and I have to much to do to waste time on bad music.