Hey everyone,
It’s me! Happy 2025! Or something! I don’t know! I don’t really have anything to say about the state of the world at this exact moment other than a sort of feral sobbing scream, so instead I’m here to tell you about me. Because you signed up for that. Lol.
Sorry I went away for a while — I was shocked to discover that my last newsletter was, unintentionally, exactly one entire year ago today. But this year I’m making a concerted effort to return to this newsletter in a real way. In fact, many more things are coming from me this year whether you like it or not! Ominous positivity!
I’m here to share some personal news and some things I have coming up that I suspect you may want to know about. First of all, the big news is that I’m moving to Durham, North Carolina in February! I’ve loved living in my home state of Maine for the last four years and change, and I do plan to return eventually. But I’ve felt increasingly drawn to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill-area music scene in the last couple years. I keep making friends and musical connections there without even really meaning to, and it’s a music scene where someone like me — who frequently feels not trad enough for the trad people but too folky for the indie people — fits right in. I’m currently trying to figure out the logistics of getting all my stuff down there. Moving sucks ass, did you guys know about that?? It’s a logistical nightmare and it’s very emotionally complicated! But I’m excited. It feels like the right choice. And it feels like a new phase is just around the corner. I will have, for the first time in my life, my OWN APARTMENT. I’m very very excited about that.
Anyway, what, pray tell, is going on with my MUSIC CAREER? Well, I’ll tell you about some upcoming tour dates in February, but for now here’s one thing:
I’ve been working with my friend Kristin Andreassen and the team over at Miles of Music Camp (one of my favorite musical spaces on this planet) to put together a mini-festival of online workshops during the month of February! That means it’s coming right up!! We’re calling it Miles of Music: Reprise because all the workshops are based on previous offerings from the in-person camp. We have two three-week classes and four one-off workshops, which I’ll list here:
3 WEEK CLASS: Expanding Your Song Accompaniment Toolbox for Intermediate/Advanced Guitarists with me, Isa :)
3 WEEK CLASS: Home Recording with Shane Leonard (drummer, multi-instrumentalist, producer extraordinaire for Anna Tivel, Humbird, Mipso, etc.)
Building Your Song Bank: Generative Songwriting to Get Past the Blank Page with Don Mitchell of Darlingside
Writing from Place: Crafting Songs from Memory and Sensory Detail with Naomi Westwater
Singing Through Fear with Lizzy Ross of Violet Bell
Ingredients of Pop Song Production with Elizabeth Ziman of Elizabeth and the Catapult
I mean, come on!!! What a lineup! In addition to all of these, I will be hosting three Sunday morning writing sessions that are free if you sign up for any of the above workshops. We’ll also have a virtual kickoff and closing gathering. If you want more details about any of these workshops, or to sign up, click HERE RIGHT NOW.
I really hope to see some of you there! It’s coming right up, so don't delay! Here’s the full schedule:
2024 was a great year for me, but I didn’t really recap 2024 in any public way because, reader, I didn’t feel like it. I did, however, stumble upon a nice take on the “best of 2024” list so I thought I’d share it here.
I realized while making my “best of 2024” playlist that I had a number of experiences in 2024 where a very specific moment in recorded music completely knocked the wind out of me. These are the musical moments that I would literally pay money to repeatedly Eternal Sunshine-style remove from my brain so I could hear them again for the first time. I realize that by telling you about all of these things I’m kind of ruining the surprises in these songs, so if you want to REALLY experience this shit spoiler-free, listen to the first five songs on this playlist and THEN keep reading.
The first note of the chorus of Charli xcx’s “sympathy is a knife”
I listened to BRAT for the first time (and the second time and third time) during a four-hour drive from Maine to Vermont in July, and I’m shocked I didn’t get pulled over because this album made me feel so jacked that I kept accidentally driving 25 miles over the speed limit. And there is one specific moment that really got me the first time I heard it, and I’m going to explain it to you using music theory. TW music theory. Okay so: for the entire first verse of this song, you only hear two notes. The melody, harmony, and synth are oscillating back and forth between what sounds like the tonic of the key and the third. Your ear won’t interpret it as anything else because those are literally the only two notes you are hearing. And then Charli rips into the chorus with “‘cause IIIIII” and THAT note is the sharp 4 of the original key, which in context comes out of fucking nowhere and sounds (to me) completely insane. But what’s actually happening is that that single discordant note is sending us rocketing into a different key, which becomes clear about two seconds later. The first time I heard that note, I found it so shocking and exciting in a really visceral way, not just in an intellectual music-nerd way, though I did understand what was happening when I heard it. (The other possible interpretation is that the chorus reveals that what we thought was the 1 chord in the verse was actually the 4 chord. Wow I love music. Okay I’ll shut up now)
Josh Kaufman’s guitar solo in Bonny Light Horseman’s “When I Was Younger”
This song gives absolutely no indication that an insane guitar solo is about to happen until literally one second before it happens. This solo feels to me like you’re walking down a path in the desert and all of a sudden the fucking Grand Canyon opens up in front of you.
The entrance of the pipes in “The Birds” by Aerialists
Aerialists are a Canadian prog-trad-tune-rock band comprised of several of my best friends from college, and I am one of their biggest fans. (If Aerialists have a million fans I’m one of them, if Aerialists have one fan it’s me, if Aerialists have no fans I’m dead, etc) This track takes you through several time zones/continents/ecological biomes over the course of five minutes, and then towards minute six when you think things are peaking, Brighde Chaimbeul’s pipes make a gorgeous surprise entrance to bring it home. That got an out loud “fuck yeah” from me.
The entrance of Taj Mahal’s harmony vocal in Kaïa Kater’s “Fédon”
Kaia Kater is my friend and one of the most exciting and creative and unique musicians currently doing it, imo, and her record “Strange Medicine” was one of my top albums of the year. She got THE Taj Mahal to sing on her song “Fédon,” and when that harmony vocal came in the first time on the second chorus, I got crazy full-body chills. The texture of their two voices together, the ragged, intense quality in his voice alongside Kaïa’s, absolutely destroyed me.
This harmony moment in ML Buch’s “Flames shards goo”
Okay so this came out in 2023, but it was one of the albums I listened to most this year so it felt wrong to not include it. This song is my favorite on the record — it feels very Hejira, which is one of the highest compliments I can think of. How does she do that with the guitars???? That melody??? This whole song just wrecks me, and the first time I heard it, this specific moment where the harmony vocals sneak in and kind of spiral out into the sky on the word “you” (2:33), made me tear up! I also love what the vocals do on the second “here we go” later on.
Bonus: The first big entrance of the score in Challengers
I love movies and I love film scores. I WILL score a film one day, that’s a fact about me. Challengers was one of my favorite movies of the year and one of my favorite film scores in recent memory, and the big entrance of the score hits so hard that it made me say “hell yeah” out loud on an airplane. Also please, I beg you, watch comedian Sam Taggart’s videos in which he writes lyrics to the score because I swear to god they still get stuck in my head on a not-infrequent basis
By the way, Spotify continues to be a sickeningly evil company that supports everything that is bad for art and human life! They also compress music too much! So here’s your regular reminder that I use Tidal and you can too!
Other things/entities I liked in 2024: All Fours by Miranda July, dirty martinis, my sister’s cat Valentina (pictured), these pants, saunas and cold plunges, playing the bass, drinking less, intentionally being in touch with my friends more.
Things I’m getting into in 2025: lifting weights, voice notes, synths, dance classes and more dancing in general, hosting gatherings, befriending my neighbors, joining liberation movements in a real day-to-day way, not letting the bastards get us down. Still drinking less, but also still dirty martinis.
Okay. Thanks for reading. More soon,
Isa
Great hearing from you! As I was reading this I was listening to one of your former band mates. Good Luck on your move NC. Stay warm. If you ever find yourself in MN, we would enjoy seeing you on stage again!
Also: the violin solo on Sam Moss's World!!