This album is fantastic. I’ve been listening to it a lot over the past month. There’s a lightness to the album but having read the backstory of the album and how much of it was inspired by Will Kennedy’s wife, Kate Schneider, getting brain cancer, it also feels very on brand for me. #sadsongsforlife
Dec 15, 2024
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22° Halo’s Lily of the Valley is a collection of songs written by Philly-based songwriter Will Kennedy during his wife Kate’s treatment for a very rare brain cancer. For full transparency, Will and Kate are close friends of mine – Kate’s treatment was a tremendous weight on my chest, and the news of her cancer going dormant was one of the high points of recent years for me. This album hit me hard as hell knowing the people behind it. But the more I listen, the more I marvel at the specificity and universality of what Will achieved here.
What makes Lily of the Valley such a remarkable album is the graceful confidence Kennedy presents these delicately intimate moments with. It’s incredibly difficult to write confident, commanding songs about such immense uncertainty. My jaw would drop at the sheer chutzpah of the recurring lead guitar on album opener “Bird Sanctuary” – it sounds like This Heat playing Thin Lizzy! And these are somehow the first notes we hear to set the stage for Kennedy’s recollections of some of the most precious, intimate moments of his relationship? It’s incredible.
This propulsive feeling sustains throughout the album. “Orioles at Dusk” is anthemic and climactic in an almost literal drive-into-the-sunset sense, and the closing, titular track could throw a crowd makes me want to beat the air with my fists. That an immense tenderness can remain at the forefront of songs with such electric energy, rather than something masked by the music itself, is a big part of what makes this album such a wonder.
I hate to use a word like “juxtaposition” but it really is this juxtaposition that got under my skin the first time I heard this album and has kept me coming back for 3-5 listens per week since then. If I heard this album without knowing the backstory, without paying attention to the lyrics or knowing Will or Kate, I would still place it as a new high point in the jangle pop canon. It’s how effortlessly Kennedy can get you to sing along with a song about the terror of watching the person you love most endure chemo that makes this a truly transcendent record.
The lyrics are bracingly beautiful and generously specific. The songs sometimes take on a stream of consciousness quality, as if Kennedy is remembering moments both painful and uplifting in the same thought and listing them out as they arrive to him. The moments where Kate accompanies him vocally are among the most moving I heard this year. Kennedy has an uncanny ability to shed off self-consciousness in his music without ever demanding the listener’s attention. He is beautifully articulating a truth too deeply, painfully human to present as anything other than that; the truth.
Dec 30, 2024
this is an album I return to in the fall/winter, and while it might not sound like a comfort album from the description i’m about to give it still plays a sort of comfort album role for me during this time of year where it’s easy to isolate and feel listless.
this album was made in the midst of a period of debilitating illness for the artist that left him mostly bedridden for months at a time, during which he had little else to do but languish in his deteriorating mental and physical state. each song focuses on a different thought spiral that took over his mind in this time: his past relationship failures, his unhealthy coping mechanisms, his “inner demons,” and his increasingly frail body.
though the subject matter is pretty bleak, the production and composition across the album is gorgeous, and the care that went into making the album reveals how music became an escape for Baths–a medium into which his suffering could be channeled into something which allowed him to transcend the restrictions of his illness and give meaning to his pain.
I found this album during a time of similar struggles in my own life, and the album was a sort of companion to me throughout that period. It gave me some sense of not being alone in my experience, and if Baths could make it through his period of isolation and pain, then there was no reason to think that my own wouldn't also pass eventually.
luckily it did, and now I can listen back to this album and find comfort in the role it played for me and also just enjoy it for being gorgeous music regardless of any personal connection I have to it. also I think it’s a hopeful album simply because it exists–a testament to Bath’s resilience as an individual and talent as an artist. and since he’s found health and happiness and gone back to making the very cute and wholesome music that is his usual style
anyway all this to say if you tend to feel a little bleh this time of year and have a high tolerance for hearing other’s tragedies then this album is a great fall listen and oddly kinda cozy
Nov 1, 2024
Listening to this album recently has made me feel slightly less insane about the state of *my* life and the world in general (ironically I am allergic to peanuts)
Rec’ing the whole album, but my most played songs are: Top Level Joy, I Was There, That’s Life, S.U.R.V.I.V.E, Big Machine, Nitrogen
*I’m tender and buttons*
*and cursed with nostalgia*
*I read a book once that said it’s a disorder*
I wish I was there, I wish I was there, I wish I was there—
*No one wants to talk about the downturn*
*or the self decaying nature of everything we know*
Get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here—
Mar 4, 2025
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I’m not a parent and do not plan to be. Kids can wear me out fast with their high energy and noise level; it leaves me very over-stimulated. But it’s pretty extreme when people say they ”hate kids” and I often feel it’s a reflection of their childhood and beliefs around how kids “should be.” That they were expected to be quiet, obedient, and out of the way by their parents when they were little.
It’s fucking hard to be a kid. You’re dealing with a rapidly-changing body and underdeveloped brain, managed by flawed adults who are enforcing boundaries that you do not understand. It’s confusing and hard to manage your feelings and honestly just a lot.
People are impatient with kids when they‘re brand new to the world and figuring it all out, and this is a time kids need a friend the most. Children can also be teachers to adults with how they are less habituated to the world. They teach us how to be free and open-hearted and silly and imaginative.
A good practice is to be kinder and gentler with kids. If that feels difficult, start with gentleness toward your inner child. Maybe that’s the child in your life that needs your attention and kindness most.
Apr 16, 2025
I meant to post this yesterday. Absolutely beautiful morning for walk.
This morning is also beautiful but in a spring rain kind of way.
Mar 23, 2025
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Prescriptive gender is a prison. Rather than gender being a form of self-expression, gender is treated as a pass/fail test for how well you can conform to cultural expectations.
Since I was young, I remember feeling a great deal of pressure to conform to these expectations around what “men” are meant to be. You like sports, cars, womanizing, aggression, and not having feelings. I felt so distant from this ideal. I was sensitive and shy, and I preferred spending my time being creative in some way
For a long time, I felt like I was failing at “being a man.” In many ways I was! Because I didn’t need to bea man. All I needed to be was myself.
It’s taken me a long time to separate myself from prescriptive gender, sharpening in on which aspects of masculine energy I identify with and which I don’t. I’m not done yet. Maybe I will never fully be. The self continues to evolve over time, and I suspect aspects of my gender will too.
Mar 15, 2025