Walk Through Fire, Sunny

At first glance, this is just easy listening country/soul. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, there are several earworms here. And at second glance, simple melodies are brought to life by textured lyrics, depth of voice, and full-hearted emotion. There's a three-dimensionality that I'd be remiss to dismiss as "just" easy listening.

Many of the songs are overtly about love (the rest just not overt), which fits the musical themes. Yola does a nice job putting forth a thesis in the title track. Part of the dimensionality of this album is her ability to convincingly sing about the various facets of love: the joys, the pains, the longings, the drives and desires. Often in the same stanza. The feelings are relatable because of the universality, but the depth must be coming from someplace personal. "We" might be going into a summer of actual-human-socializing, and as such, love might be back on the table with all its excitements and dreads.

There is a certain mollifying capacity in this music. Yola has the ability to melt away the bs of "work life" and give you earworms to hum even as someone is chewing you out ("work all daaaay"), bringing you ease where maybe before there was dis-ease, and that in itself is worth something special.

P.S. I don't have anything to say about the Dan Auerbach involvement in the album other than I noticed it. In a way it's an easy narrative explanation of how a Bristol singer is doing Americana blues, but that would be far too easy.

P.P.S. A real tragedy is that Yola is the second result for a Google search (and yes, I know Google results are personalized, so ymmv) behind a Squarespace clone.