When you strip it all down to bare essentials, you get Jamie Stillway’s Lullaby For a Stranger. The instrumental album has a sense of intimate warmth that is gamely striving to stave away coldness and alienation. Considering Stillway wrote and recorded the album in tiny, Internet-less cabin on an island in the Puget sound, it all makes sense. In locking herself away, Stillway focused on what matters most: connecting with others.
Stillway explores her connections — particularly the ones that have been severed. “North Dakota Overture” imagines the journey her grandmother took from Minnesota to Oregon to deliver and give up her baby for adoption. Thirty years later, that adult would leave her child after six months: the child was Jamie. Lullaby asks how one comes to the decision to create and leave a life; how both parties navigate the reverberating grief as a result of that decision; and how to cultivate compassion for those who make that impossible choice.
“Communication is a Two Way Street” evokes these themes: alternating comforting melodies with swirls of sound that emphasize the chasm between individuals, the song is equally unsettling and inviting. “The Patience of Spring,” by contrast, is warm and inviting while tinged with melancholy. The melody is hopeful, striving for growth. The final track asks us to consider whom the lullaby is for: mother, child, or both?