There’s little to criticise here

Artist: Rosie Thomas
Album: If Songs Could Be Held
Label: Sub Pop
Tracks: 11
Running Time: 34 minutes






Jason Sprinkle was a gifted yet disturbed guerrilla artist who retired from the game after he was arrested on terrorist related charges for leaving an installation, which was partly labelled “The Bomb,” on a major Seattle thoroughfare. He was jailed and while inside diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

Sprinkle died on May 16 after being hit by a freight train in Mississippi, like many of the inspired moments in his life there were no witnesses.

Rosie Thomas dedicates this, her fourth album to Sprinkle. It is clear his sudden death affected her and If Songs Could Be Held is Thomas letting go and clinging on in the same breath.
Her songs have a way of sliding in under your ribcage and forcing down on your lungs, half choking you as a reminder of the emotional gravitas good music carries. For touchstones, look to Iron and Wine, Damien Jurado and the more modern take on alt country. Thomas’ voice certainly has the required lilt but she contains it for the vast majority of this record, allowing yelps to escape only as she drifts away from the mic.

There are a handful of unabashed love songs here as well.

Tomorrow is the best of those and wraps the album. A sober acoustic strum runs underneath a husky Thomas while strings waltz through the first verse. The chorus is pleadingly honest: “I would follow you/Anywhere you are going to/Tomorrow, forever, always”.

Death Came and Got Me is the most direct reference to Sprinkle and aches without hope. Piano echoes in and out while a bass manages to drag itself but it is her voice that owns the song without dominating the empty spaces.
There’s little to criticise here, Thomas writes introspectively but with a genuine ear for the heart of her audience.