Somewhere Between - The New album by Molly Martin So many times, Molly Fitzpatrick Martin has said, in one way or another, that she doesnʼt want to do this. She doesnʼt want to sing in front of crowds. She doesnʼt want to lead a band. She doesnʼt want to make records. What she wants to cook the kind of food you dream about when youʼre from the deep south and end up somewhere rainy, cold, and full of strangers that donʼt understand you. She wants to play her songs with her friends and family, in her home and their homes and laugh and share the kind of summer evening in the southeastern heat thatʼs only cured with cold whiskey in a mason jar, fireflies, and a front porch. But sometimes, itʼs your best friends who say, “Fuck what you want.” Lucky for us, Mollyʼs friends are some of Nashvilleʼs finest musicians, and they knew it was high time she gave these songs away. Molly, like many musicians before her–Ted Hawkins and Catherine Irwin come to mind–writes and plays like no oneʼs watching. She delivers songs devoid of pretense and irony. She sings what she means. In “Slow Bleed,” a steel guitar drenches the track like a breaking fever, and we see the growing depression in a loved one. The pain around the eyes, the sullen expressions, the forced laughs. “Iʼll wait by your side ʻtill you find what you need/ together weʼll learn how to stop this slow bleed.” “Not Tonight” is a loverʼs surrender (and eerily sounds like itʼs the flipped perspective of “Slow Bleed”). The steel is there, but itʼs found a lilting, dreamy quality that creates an uncomfortable tension with the narrative of exhausted capitulation, of not even having the energy to throw your hands up. “Not tonight, I canʼt hear it again.../ different chords but the same old song/ Iʼm getting tired of singing along...draw up a confession, honey Iʼll sign/ make my mark on the dotted line.” Then we have the chaser and the chased, the one who wants it all and the one who isnʼt ready to give it away. “Tomatoes” is clever and as high-spirited as it gets on a pretty dark record. Molly picks a Townes Van Zandt/John Hurt-esque lick as she lists the ways sheʼs going to keep her lover “hungry” for her love: “Apples from my branches/ peaches in summertime/ show you in the morninʼ, youʼre the first thing on my mind.” Itʼs a sultry and barefoot promise, with a clever and almost threatening plea at the end: “Donʼt make me go hungry for your love.” Then “Poor House,” the tale of a woman whoʼs just too much for most men. Said plainly in the chorus, “My love will put you in the poor house.” Disclaimer: I wrote that song with Molly. But I thought it would end up sort of halfway between Townes and Lucinda, a good finger snapper. Then Molly and her band took it and turned it into a boot to the teeth. I think my fucking gums start bleeding when I hear it. Iʼm serious. Never trust a happy songwriter, and never trust a happy song. Donʼt you do it. Happiness and honesty arenʼt friends, and songwriters–real ones, who hurt and love and drink too much and work a shitty job like everyone else–should be honest to the bone (if only in their songs). Molly comes from that dwindling school of storytellers, who donʼt care one lick for applause as much as they do for singing what they mean. Mollyʼs the stranger with a guitar in a dirty bar room that made you cry, and you dried your eyes before anybody noticed. Donʼt be ashamed. You ainʼt the first. -Lloyd Andrew Phillips