To Keep Him Here LP
Out March 29 Via Anyway Records
Inspired By NPR StoryCorps Episode Featuring Songwriter’s Father
Today, the Columbus, OH based indie folk act Hello Emerson has shared “Church” and the interlude track “‘Trying to be Helpful,’” new singles off To Keep Him Here, their latest LP, due out March 29th via Anyway Records. The release comes with a music video directed by Reece Thompson, underscoring the album’s themes of hope and resilience, featuring an older couple joyfully baking and dancing, contrasted with frontman Sam Emerson Bodary’s bittersweet lyrics: “songs won’t keep you here / when it’s your time to go / but they can stand here in your place / and keep some of your memories safe.”
For Bodary, “Church,” as well as the record as a whole, are attempts to find peace with the mortality of his loved ones, inspired by a serious (but not fatal) accident suffered by his father: “This is another thesis statement for the record. Dad didn’t die – we know that now. But we got a vision of what it could look and feel like when he does. These songs are a salve for me and my family now, but they will also be there when we do lose him in the future. Songs don’t last forever, but neither do people. Songs are still worth writing and people are still worth loving.”
Consisting of singer/guitarist Bodary, percussionist and musical director/arranger Dan Seibert, and keyboardist Jack Doran, Hello Emerson has been crafting subtle, earnest, and expansive songs since its formation in 2015. Drawing on the midwestern songwriting tradition of acclaimed acts like Bright Eyes and The Mountain Goats, Bodary’s erudite yet homespun lyrics are bolstered by the group’s increasingly baroque arrangements. A collaborative act inspired by the local artistic community of their home base of Columbus, Ohio, their 2020 sophomore effort, How to Cook Everything featured contributions from 50 local musicians, creating an immersive and complex yet folky and accessible sound.
Their latest effort, the forthcoming To Keep Him Here further develops and focuses their style, while applying it to a set of darker themes. A concept album, the record delves into the chaos and confusion that followed a serious accident suffered by Bodary’s father which landed him in the ICU for nine days. Across the record, Bodary uses his measured yet honest lyrical voice to articulate and sort through the terror of the experience, and the strength which pulled him and his family through. Tracked live in his godfather’s home, the band’s physical proximity lends an added layer of intimacy to the tracks, all while maintaining Seibert’s subtle yet sweeping arrangements. The result is the band’s strongest effort yet; a record of hope and fear, To Keep Him Here finds beauty in the kind of compassion which can only arise from disorder.
To Keep Him Here Tracklist:
1. “It was twelve-ten”
2. Tupperware For Glass
3. In The Corner
4. “Trying to be helpful”
5. Church
6. Sale Today
7. Dinners I
8. Sale Today Canon
9. “So, why?”
10. Couch Song
11. To Keep Him Here
12. Dinners II
13. Tough Luck
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