Wished Bone, “Cops” (self-released)
Wished Bone (aka L.A.-via-Athens, Ohio singer/songwriter/guitarist Ashley Rhodus) just dropped her third album, Sap Season, and it sounds as if it’s going to launch her into the sort of semi-stardom enjoyed by musicians such as Sharon Van Etten, Wye Oak, Angel Olsen, and Cate Le Bon. (Wished Bone will be featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered on November 19, so it’s fait accompli, right?)
Rhodus‘s approach—understated delivery, mellow acoustic-guitar strums, and breezy yet melancholy melodies—runs rampant in indie-folk-rock circles, but she imbues these elements with a feathery authority, aided by band mates Brian Kupillas (guitar, drums, keys), Phil Hartunian (bass, guitar, clarinet), and Spencer Radcliffe (saxophone).
“Cops” is Sap Season‘s standout. On it, Rhodus—a plant biologist who became a bartender—sounds like an American Cate Le Bon, her voice perfectly pitched between child-like wonder and world-weary resignation. The song’s a woozy waltz shot through with a summertime languor, its gently see-sawing main riff and sighing pedal steel filigrees evoking the ambivalence of the young woman protagonist falling in love with an older man. The lyrics tell an idiosyncratic tale about an affair involving a gift axe that our heroine still carries with her; “Carl Sagan’s blazer was bending and beaming” is a line I won’t soon forget.
If Wished Bone isn’t signed to major indie and playing festivals by next summer, I’ll slowly shake my head in disbelief.
