I get dozens of e-mails a day with requests to listen to new music. I recently got one along the lines of “Ever had a bad breakup? Ever heard a song about a breakup from the woman’s perspective?”
Needless to say, someone needs to work on their pitches. But it does expose a common chestnut of songwriting: what are you supposed to talk about if you’re not talking about love? The Good Graces‘ new album Prose and Consciousness answers that question. Kim Ware, the Georgia-based collective’s central member, took it upon herself to write an entire album focusing instead on her relationship with herself.
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| The Good Graces. Photo by Maigh Houlihan. |
“This album represents honesty,” says Ware. “It’s really important to put something out that is honest and real,” Ware says. “I used to feel strongly that my songs needed to have a clear point, but we can’t always come away with a clear answer in life. These songs reflect that realization.”
On “His Name Was the Color That I Loved,” Ware trades in her wry wit for an endearing sincerity. The song has an earnest folksiness to it, consciously stepping back from the rock-infused Americana that was the foundation of the Good Grace’s most recent EP, Hummingbird.
Ware was given the title for the song “His Name Was the Color That I Loved” as a member of a songwriter’s group, with a challenge to write a song to it. “It didn’t start out being autobiographical, but then it turned out to be about my Dad, and times we would take a walk after a frost to look at the buds to see if they were still frozen, to see if the crops would survive. Writing this way pushes me to write outside my typical subject matter.”
Prose and Consciousness will be out on October 11th, so keep your eyes peeled and your heart open.