Veteran performer Rachael Sage brings all that experience to bear on her recent release The Other Side. As Sage explained to our sister site Rainbow Rodeo, the album comes in the wake of cancer treatment, the upheaval of lockdown, and Sage starting her own record label. It’s a lot, but The Other Side finds Sage taking it in stride, her chamber pop contemplative, accepting and triumphant.
There’s no doubt that you can hear strains of the freak folk movement here — a certain inventiveness and precise if offbeat observation that could only have been born in the Alphabet City of the 1990s. “Flowers For Free” encapsulates this — a full-on meditation of what I interpret as an encounter with a Hare Krishna follower. The narrator isn’t about to throw everything away, but is captured by a worldview that considers kindness and beauty first.
“No Regrets” is a warm declaration of the things Sage holds dear, especially when all those things hang in the balance. But the song isn’t maudlin as one might expect — the embrace of the song’s horn section, sturdy piano, and stalwart drumbeat give the song a sense of mission as much as a list of the little things that make life worth living.
Clocking in at 15 songs, Sage covers a wide bit of sonic ground, invoking influences as disparate as Ani DiFranco and U2. There’s something for everyone here — and hooks galore. The Other Side will stick with you for some time — emotionally, and with all of Sage’s irresistible earworms. At the end of the day, though, it’s clear Sage has given her whole self to this project, more present than ever before. It’s a gift for us all.