Tag: Polaroid Lovers

Explore the Essential Songs of Sarah Jarosz’s Discography

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Stripping away convention, honing in on narrative, and keeping complex melodies afloat with her ethereal vocals, Sarah Jarosz is a superlative presence in the roots music landscape. The daughter of two schoolteachers hailing from Wimberley, Texas, she began learning to play the mandolin at age 9. By the time she turned 12, Sarah was already gracing stages alongside the likes of musical giants David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs.

Her multi-instrumentalist capabilities and songwriting proficiency only grew from there; at the age of 16, Jarosz signed a deal with Sugar Hill Records and released her first album, Song Up in Her Head, in 2009. This critically acclaimed record would be the first of what now surmounts to seven full-length, tremendously lauded projects. Polaroid Lovers, Jarosz’s latest and the muse of her current tour, is set to be released on January 26, 2024.

Over the span of nearly two decades spent recording and touring, Sarah Jarosz has established herself as a foundational thread in the tapestry of modern roots music. From impeccable collaborations (with Punch Brothers, David Grisman, Sierra Ferrell), to forming a supergroup alongside Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Watkins (I’m With Her), to a whopping 5 hours and 45 minutes of music published under her name, Jarosz stands firmly in her power. As she forges ahead, she only continues to outdo herself.

While her entire catalog is sure to edify any listener, this compilation showcases some of Jarosz’s most essential tracks. Tracing the arc of her musicianship from adolescence to adulthood, the following 17 songs demonstrate the particular sonic maturity, lyrical astuteness, and emotional evocation that span all she creates.

“Mansinneedof”

From Jarosz’s first album, Song Up in Her Head, this indelible instrumental boldly answers the question, “Can a mandolin be a lead instrument?” with a resounding, “Of course!” The first of many Grammy nominations acquired throughout her career, this tune was considered for Best Country Instrumental in 2009. Impossibly advanced beyond her years, Jarosz’s nimble and articulate melody is akin to a sonic coast through star-studded galaxies.

“Come On Up To The House”

In a clear demonstration of the range of her musical influences, the most-streamed song from Sarah’s inaugural album is a cover of Tom Waits’s “Come On Up To The House.” Her cool, slippery voice lends a new angle to the iconic tune. Paired with astute backing vocals from Tim O’Brien and a slick fiddle solo by Alex Hargreaves, this song grooves right along – an ingenious, albeit unlikely, bluegrass cover.

“Annabelle Lee”

Jarosz’s sophomore album, Follow Me Down, is latent with a mystical quality that reaches towards the ethers, shepherded into expansiveness by a creative spectrum of influences. The third track, “Annabelle Lee,” features lyrics adapted from the illustrious Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same name. Jarosz sets the eerie tale against a conglomerate of haunting textures – the heightened pace and drums evoke a sense of urgency while Jerry Douglas makes his lap steel wail, a somber cello moans, and Dan Tyminski’s backing vocals lend fullness to the ravenous depths of this dark tune. It is also worth noting that Jarosz performed and recorded this tune, very fittingly filmed in an old hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, for the Transatlantic Sessions in 2011. (Watch above.)

“The Tourist”

Sarah sure knows how to pick a cover. From Prince to the Decemberists to Joanna Newsom, she can masterfully braid her grace and artistry into anything. “The Tourist” offers Jarosz’s take on Radiohead, an influence cited among many of Jarosz’s contemporaries, including Madison Cunningham and Chris Thile. In fact, Punch Brothers provide the musical backdrop on this track, their syncopated rhythms and blustery fills meeting Jarosz and Thile’s airtight harmonies to create a sense of whirling, palpable, delicate angst.

“Build Me Up From Bones”

Off of her Grammy-nominated third album, this titular track received an additional nom for Best American Roots Song of 2014. This song is SJ’s most popular of all time, having racked up a total of 70.7M streams on Spotify. Here, Jarosz’s songwriting forges into new territory; her lyrics are both poetic and measured, imbued with textures of velvety longing. The form matches the content, from Aoife O’Donovan’s dewy harmonies to the pizzicato string section to the gorgeous cello solo. Effectively, listeners are bathed in a most intimate listening experience that beckons infinite re-listens.

“1,000 Things”

In another track off of Build Me Up From Bones, here SJ shares songwriting credits with the legendary Darrell Scott. The result? Pure synastry. Underscored by pulsating Celtic rhythms, this uptempo earworm says 1,000 things despite its brevity.

“House of Mercy”

This tune, along with the album carrying it – Undercurrent – won Sarah her first two Grammys in one night. “House of Mercy” was crowned Best American Roots Performance of 2017, and it was indubitably worthy. Jarosz shares songwriting credits with Australian singer-songwriter Jedd Hughes, and together they achieve a dark story arc as the encumbered narrator addresses an unwanted visitor. Jarosz opens up her sound into cutting, fierce Americana twang – effectively offering audiences a new layer to her multitudes of sound.

“Jacqueline”

The closing track of Undercurrent is stark, honest, and bewildering. The song is named after the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in New York City where Jarosz, who once lived nearby, would often do her pondering. Accompanied solely by an electric guitar, Jarosz’s voice is agile and glimmering as liquid silver. She muses over the reflective surface and projected companion while disclosing her own state of unease, immersing listeners in an intimate, unyielding pensiveness.

“Your Water” (with Parker Millsap)

The first of a two-single release titled the Luck Mansion Sessions (2017), SJ here collaborates with fellow singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Parker Millsap. The track, written and originally released by Millsap, is delivered as a duet. The groove opens up into a soul-type feel, allowing for Sarah to showcase a more raw, bluesy, unmeasured latitude of her voice.

“See You Around”

“See You Around” is the title track off of supergroup I’m With Her’s first and – to every listener’s chagrin – only full-length album. In 2018, Jarosz linked up with two of the most astounding women in roots music, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins, to form a trio of unadulterated excellence (it should be noted that that group won Americana Music Association’s Music Duo/Group of the Year). The album waffles between the three songwriters’ contributions, with each vocalist singing lead on an approximately even number of tracks. “See You Around” is driven by Jarosz’s signature poetic lyrics and fluttery melody, elevated to new horizons by the pristine, angelic blend of harmonies from Watkins and O’Donovan. The musical chemistry these women share evokes the divine; every single song on this album delivers listeners into the sublime.

“Johnny”

For her also Grammy-winning fifth studio album, World on the Ground (2020), Sarah Jarosz invites listeners to experience an array of vignettes; her songs on this album, more than ever, become vehicles for potent storytelling.“Johnny” is the second of three tracks on the album named, presumably, for a character the song aims to illustrate. Jarosz has said that during this album, she “[Tried] to take a step back and look out at the world in my songwriting, rather than looking inward,” and spent much time constructing the album as a patchwork of memories from her hometown in Texas, both faithful and fictionalized.

“Johnny” conveys the psychological landscape of a slightly drunk, slightly disillusioned man who is “just waitin’ on the stars/ that will never align.” It’s all slightly devastating, yet the melody latches onto an unforgettable earworm of a hook uplifted by its folk-pop flavor. Jarosz incorporates a strings section alongside drums, electric guitar, and mandolin, seamlessly using the nuances of sound to bolster the complex mundanities of Johnny’s life.

“Pay It No Mind”

Jarosz shares the songwriting credits on “Pay It No Mind” (also off of World on the Ground) with the renowned John Leventhal, who also produced the album and plays a slew of instruments sprinkled throughout. The song begins with just Sarah and a pensive guitar riff, musing upon a bird and her ponderings. The song then builds in dynamics, layering percussion and eventually a full orchestration of instruments and vocals. It’s slick, it’s sly, and it looks at the world with a cool sense of distance.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” / “my future”

In the midst of quarantine, Sarah Jarosz committed to staying connected with fans by using Garageband and her home microphone to record one cover each week from July to October of 2020. In January 2021, she released two of the covers, U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and Billie Eilish’s “my future,” on streaming services. These barebones covers are a time capsule of a moment drenched in emotion, isolation, and fear. Catharsis swells through the minimalistic recordings – Jarosz cradles her whole soul into these songs, and the results are absolutely astounding.

“Mama”

For her sixth full-length studio album, Blue Heron Suite (2021), Sarah Jarosz released a song cycle that she first premiered at Freshgrass in 2017, whereupon she was awarded with the Freshgrass Composition Commission. At the time, Sarah was reckoning with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and reflecting upon childhood trips to the town of Port Aransas, Texas, which at that time had recently been severely affected by Hurricane Harvey. Named for the Great Blue Herons she and her mother used to observe along the town’s shore, this album is imbued with love and hope in its deepest forms. “Mama,” the opening track, is an utterly gorgeous, pared-down arrangement of voice and guitar – a most gentle and tender ode to Jarosz’s mother, who is thankfully now in remission.

“For Free” (with David Crosby)

An astonishing songwriter and pioneer of three-part harmony in American roots/folk music as we know it, David Crosby was a long time supporter of Sarah Jarosz’s work up until his passing last January. Sarah graced the title track of Crosby’s final full-length solo album, For Free (2021). The two sing the entirety of this Joni Mitchell cover in tight harmony, their voices mirroring one another perfectly. The pared back solo piano accompaniment highlights the duo’s vocal finesse; every riff is intertwined with precision and elegance.

“Jealous Moon”

“Jealous Moon” was the first of four singles SJ released from her upcoming album, Polaroid Lovers (out this Friday). Co-written alongside Daniel Tashian, the record’s producer, Sarah remarks of the song, “I’m always seeking to push myself into new sonic territory, and this song gave me permission to not hold back.” In this track, she boldly steps away from her traditional acoustic tethers and moves towards a more pop-rock-twang fusion. Jarosz successfully elicits a sense of novelty while still embodying the sense of fullness and depth she puts into all she creates – reminding us that we still have yet to see the full bloom of her artistry.

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez

New Sounds and New Perspectives Combine on Sarah Jarosz’s ‘Polaroid Lovers’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Perspective. A universal concept, but also something which bears the potential to be entirely different from one person to the next. How one person views a setting, an experience – or even something as simple and innocent as a Polaroid picture – can set the tone for how they come to hold onto and look back on an entire memory.

The 11 songs on Polaroid Lovers, the seventh album from multi-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz, not only presents the bulk of its musical subjects from a variety of vantage points, but the very making of this record is a story built on a shift in perspective for Jarosz herself.

“World on the Ground was my first traversing into really working on songwriting as more of a storyteller and not necessarily always writing from my own perspective or writing my own story. Or, maybe a better way to say it would be, from a confessional kind of point of view,” says Jarosz. “I think that really carried over into [Polaroid Lovers] and was very much assisted by the people that I was co-writing with,” she adds. “And so I think by co-writing all the songs and by not being in a solitary mindset, I was able to more easily slip into trying to write the songs from a more universal perspective.”

Jarosz is nowhere near a newcomer to the concept of collaboration, both in live performance and in songwriting for studio records. Just ask mandolinist and songwriter Chris Thile, former host of the iconic live performance/radio show Live From Here, or Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan, Jarosz’s creative cohorts in the Grammy-winning roots supergroup I’m With Her. The New York-to-Nashville transplant carved out her place in the musical landscape with an indubitable gift for solo songwriting. This gift propelled Jarosz forward for a host of years, a slew of awards, and an ever-growing body of recorded work. However, staying a self-contained songwriter wasn’t without constraint – a state of affairs Jarosz admits was largely self-imposed through much of her early career, for the sake of her own artistic voice.

“I was very closed off to co-writing especially for my first couple records,” she says. “I had managers and label people always trying to set me up on co-writes and I did a couple, but I just don’t think I knew my voice well enough and I hadn’t had long enough writing on my own, performing on my own, and figuring out my sound. I think I was just worried that my voice would get lost in those [writer] rooms.”

Jarosz’s deliberate decision to not only include co-writing, but make it a dominant pillar of Polaroid Lovers seems entirely understandable as a way to push her own creative boundaries. She isn’t shy about sharing the burst of confidence that also arose within her while writing songs for the album. “I really don’t think I could have made this record even five years ago,” she says. “There were so many moments in the studio that I mean, if I’m being honest, kind of – I hate to use the word scared – but challenged me.”

If it feels strange to envision a creative powerhouse of Jarosz’s caliber struggling to embrace new musical ideas, there are plenty of specific sonic snapshots in the songs of Polaroid Lovers that Jarosz can look at through the lens of her past self and know just how differently things could have gone.

“For instance, the beginning of ‘Jealous Moon’ – when the guitar and the drums come in like right at the top – I was like, ‘Whoa, this is on a new playing field for me and a stretch from what I’ve done before,’ but I loved it,” she says. “At the end of the day, my barometer [is about] if the music is moving me, if I believe in it, and if I can proudly sing every lyric with a stamp of approval. And so I think something like that [style of introduction] – I might have just shut it down. Like, it would have scared me a little too much maybe five or 10 years ago and I would have said, ‘No, that’s not me. So we’re not going to do that.’”

Though “Jealous Moon” starts the music of Polaroid Lovers with an adventurous hook, Jarosz actually made the shift to disregard fear and connect with her inner co-writer in her mind from the very first day she met producer Daniel Tashian, while the two co-wrote “Take the High Road” – an upbeat song about staying true to oneself and not shying back from what feels right. “The thing that’s so refreshing and cool about Daniel [Tashian] is that he’s just so open and so endlessly curious about all things music and I think [he] would just be creating all the time if it were up to him,” Jarosz admits.

A seasoned songwriter and collaborator known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, Tashian brought Jarosz out of her comfort zone, often literally, in providing many changes of scenery for their writing sessions. “I met [Daniel] in March of 2022, which was when I started writing for this record, and… he just kind of welcomed me in to his family,” Jarosz says. “I wound up going on these kinds of writing retreats… and that was cool to just, get out of Nashville, shift our perspective, be in a different place, and just be really open to to the muse and to what would come.”

Other times Tashian’s sharing of simple but impactful thoughts and his own decisive opinions helped to nurtured a spirit of open possibility regarding what Jarosz would be able to write, but also ideally what she would find joy in playing for herself, as well.

“Daniel said something when we were in the studio that really resonated [with me]: ‘Why would you just want to make the same record over and over again?’ I love that, because I think you try to find your voice and hone your voice over the course of a career but the fun is in exploration – at least for me. I mean, maybe some people find comfort and repetition and that’s fine but I really love exploring and ultimately seeking what serves the song. I mean, that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day.”

Running parallel to this expanding circle of people, ideas, song forms, and stories that Jarosz was inspired to put into Polaroid Lovers are her personal tools of the trade – particularly her octave mandolin. An instrument Jarosz has grown to appreciate over the years alongside her artistry and proficiency with the mandolin, guitar, and banjo, the octave mandolin is another meaningful element of creative expanse, change, and consistency that’s become integral to who Jarosz is as a musician and what she wants to sound like.

“[Polaroid Lovers] feels more like me than ever before. Even though there might technically be some differences, I feel that it’s very strongly my voice and my sound. I think a huge part of that is my octave mandolin being a prominent texture,” she says. “I’ve gotten to this place where the octave mandolin feels like my sound in a way and I really sort of gravitated towards that instrument over the course of the years.”

A derivation of the mandolin, the octave mandolin is a fitting instrument to feature on an album that reflects new and familiar points of view. “Whenever I play octave [mandolin], I feel like, ‘This is me.’”

Beyond its presence being a defining musical attribute, for this album especially Jarosz says the octave mandolin was also a tool of creative focus amidst everything new and sometimes daunting. “Having [the octave mandolin] sort of be the through-line on this album helped me in those moments where I felt challenged by a sonic thing that felt new,” she says. “The octave mandolin would kind of make me feel like I was grounded.”

Though grounded, one need not mistake Jarosz’s sense of musical stability with any kind of fixation on genre. While there’s almost no escaping others’ archetyping of Jarosz’s work, Polaroid Lovers is neither a show of rebellion against her musical foundations, nor a calculated attempt to partition an exact ratio of familiar stylization with ideas new to her writing process.

“I personally don’t like to think of myself in terms of genre and I never really have,” she says. “It can be frustrating for me when people say, ‘Oh, you’re this, you’re that’ and I feel like, ‘Well, no…’ I think about [music] in terms of if I like it or not.” She adds, “I’ve just always felt that way and I’ve always listened to so many different types of music. It just feels too narrow, too limiting, to have to fit too squarely into a box.”

Despite the fact that the general public can launch a barrage of staunch opinions about the style of Jarosz’s work or what they may perceive is “right” about it, Jarosz says there’s a whole other dimension to Polaroid Lovers yet to be unveiled that won’t come into view until she’s out on the road, playing live, and connecting directly with everyone who’s listening. “The difference between performing a song in the studio versus performing it live in front of an audience is that I think songs sort of start to take their own journey.”

She adds, “I know my story, or I know my part of it. But sometimes, if you can be vague enough, you can almost keep it secret a little bit, where it’s like my story and my feeling about it is my own and then other people get to find their story in it as well. I think something that will be fun in singing these songs over the next however many years is discovering new perspectives with  [audiences]. The perspective will really come singing [the songs] over the course of the next year on tour. I’m very excited about getting to do that.”

Ironically, all the talk of a growing compendium of artistic styles, of new collaborators, of new musical techniques, and of new ways to tell new stories truly hammers home the notion that Jarosz’s musical world is an ever transforming space – rather than one made up of experiential snapshots, as Polaroid Lovers is aptly described. Still, Jarosz came up a solo writer and one of the biggest curiosities around potential changes ushered in by this record would be how she views the dynamic of writing music alone versus writing her music with others. Not surprisingly, Jarosz doesn’t see an inner conflict on the horizon. It’s all “the more the merrier.”

“If anything, this [album] just expanded my community, which is a wonderful thing,” Jarosz says. “Especially now living here in Nashville, I think it’s made me feel more a part of this great community. Whereas when I was 18, I think I felt like there was something to lose in writing with people – that being, losing my voice or like kind of losing my way a little bit. Now I don’t feel like that and I think that there’s nothing to lose by sitting down and trying to be creative with with someone else. I think I will always do that from here on out, but it definitely will be simultaneous to me also writing by myself. That’s something that I don’t ever want to lose and that I want to keep doing for as long as I can.”

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez

Artist of the Month: Sarah Jarosz

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The songs of Sarah Jarosz have always been snapshots. Each, whether literally or obliquely, is a tableau – a window into a moment in time, an attempt to capture but never contain the intangible present. Whether demonstrable story songs or abstract, poetic text paintings, Jarosz’s catalog of material shows a ubiquitous skill – a writerly athleticism – for ushering her listeners into the scenes she inhabits or constructs. From her earliest release to her newest, Polaroid Lovers (out January 26 on Rounder Records), Jarosz’s point of view has been confident, relatable, and inviting.

Simultaneously, the expansive body of work she’s produced since her 2009 Sugar Hill debut, Song Up in Her Head, tells a tale as much of uncertainty as of skill and finesse and, within that uncertainty, a commitment to relishing the journey – rather than rushing toward an arbitrary destination.

A teenager when she first gained national notoriety, Jarosz was often compared to her mentor-peer-friend Chris Thile and her contemporary, Sierra Hull. While child bluegrass, Americana, and string band stars – proverbial and oft-mythologized prodigies – have a much more gentle route to adulthood than say, their Hollywood counterparts, it’s still a time hallmarked by experimentation, growing pains, exploration, and a prerequisite amount of floundering. Musically, Jarosz may have “floundered” a bit less than say, Hull or Thile or any kid whose teen years may have had a recorded, audio history. Nevertheless, you can trace a through line of angst, introspection, and finding oneself underlying the precocious self confidence of her early albums.

By the time Jarosz reached 2013’s Build Me Up From Bones, which gained her her first Best Folk Album Grammy nomination, that uncertainty was no longer an undertone, but a focal point in her music. On both Bones and the follow up full-length, Undercurrent, which then won the Grammy for Best Folk Album, Jarosz picks up and runs with those musical expectations, whether overt or projected. She plays with the dichotomy between the public nature of her growing up a heart-on-her-sleeve songwriter and bluegrass picker and the individual, private nature of seeking and finding her own agency within those paradigms. She purposefully built broad and appealing, commercial songs that are both assured in their sincerity and unconcerned with virtuosity or authenticity for their own sakes. She knows exactly what she’s doing, even – if not especially – when she does not.

Needless to say, the following projects World On The Ground and Blue Heron Suite feel like they are both indelible home bases built on the steady foundation of the albums that led to them. Each are distillations of Jarosz’s musical commitment to bringing her audience inside the turmoil and delight, growth and doubt, beauty and bittersweetness of life and song. Jarosz had arrived at her destination, hadn’t she? In her beloved New York City, a Grammy winning artist, picker, and songwriter who knows who she is and why she does what she does.

Ah, but remember, it’s the journey Sarah Jarosz is after and not the destination. Polaroid Lovers is a lens into the new growing pains, the new uncertainty, the new uprooting and, eventually, re-rooting Jarosz finds herself in the middle of now. She recently moved to Nashville, building a life with her new husband, bassist Jeff Picker. Polaroid Lovers, like its predecessors, brings the listener into how living in Nashville has reshaped Jarosz’s songwriting and creative and recording processes.

It may not sound like a Music Row album – it sounds, as all of her work does, exactly like Sarah Jarosz. Whatever that sounds like! – but it’s a collection that has the Row tangled among its roots and certainly in the water. Polaroid Lovers was recorded at Sound Emporium and produced by Daniel Tashian, plus it has many a credited co-writer, a bit of a departure for the songwriter who, besides in her work with Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins in I’m With Her, rarely co-writes material for her own albums, preferring to pen most lyrics and tunes herself. Music Row and Americana hit writers like Ruston Kelly, Natalie Hemby, Jon Randall, Gordie Sampson, Tashian, and others each lent their own fingerprints and touches to this set of song snapshots.

Does Polaroid Lovers sound new? Does it sound like Nashville? Yes, it certainly does, but it doesn’t sound instant or ready-made either, and it always sounds like quintessential Jarosz. This is evidenced nowhere on the record as strongly as one of its lead singles, “Columbus & 89th.” Among more than a few masterworks in Jarosz’s catalog that center on her beloved, transplanted (former) hometown, New York City, “Columbus & 89th” is perhaps the best example of the form. Wistful and hopeful, with a tinge of bittersweetness from the wisdom that comes with age, it paints such a specific picture – of a literal street corner – but, as in all of her snapshots, this polaroid is not confining or finite, it’s resplendent and limitless. Following the photography metaphor one step further, it’s not difficult to see how the perspective Jarosz has gained by moving away from the city might have enabled her to render such a picture perfect homage to New York.

This is a vibrant, animated collection of Polaroid Lovers. This is Sarah Jarosz at her best– for now.

Watch for our Artist of the Month interview feature with Jarosz to come later this month, plus we’ll do a catalog deep dive and showcase plenty more content pulled from the BGS archives. For now, enjoy our Essential Sarah Jarosz Playlist:

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez