Part of the fun with Wendy Eisenberg is trying to predict what they’ll do next. Recent solo albums have included folky songwriting (Dehiscence in 2020), left-field confessional jazz-pop (2020’s Auto), the combination of sweet vocal melodies and experimental banjos that characterised 2021’s Bent Ring, the live performance of a long-form textual score for guitar and banjo (Bloodletting, 2021), and Viewfinder (2024), the improvisatory song cycle themed around vision loss and laser eye treatment. And if you think that’s varied, wait until you check out the collaborative work: the three albums of perfectly executed post-hardcore revivalism as part of Editrix, a fruitful spell with Bill Orcutt’s guitar quartet, some noisy no-wave clatter in Birthing Hips and a couple of albums with Kramer and David Grubbs under the Squanderers name.
With that sort of form and those sorts of friends, you might expect their new self-titled solo record to dig deeper into the world of experimentation and improvisation. But that’s not the case. If anyone had ‘The Roches go to Laurel Canyon’ on their Wendy Eisenberg bingo card, they’d have been rubbing their hands together at the release of lead song Meaning Business, a gorgeously orchestrated slice of baroque folk-rock which, under the influence of David Lynch, takes a lonely turn into weirder territory. The first thing that grabs you about this song – and the whole of the album – might be the warmth of its sound, or it might be its irresistible sense of melody. Another track with an early release was Will You Dare, a wonderfully intimate country ballad with jazzy flourishes. At times, you think you could be listening to a Willie Nelson cover, until you begin to unpack the lyrics, which are full of Eisenberg’s trademark psychological perceptiveness and emotional honesty, perhaps closer in spirit to John Prine.
There is a maturity and complexity here beyond anything they have done before, beyond what most other songwriters have done before, for that matter.
While this may not sound dramatically experimental, it is a distinct departure for Eisenberg, which makes it all the more remarkable that these are perhaps the best songs they have ever written. There is a maturity and complexity here beyond anything they have done before, beyond what most other songwriters have done before, for that matter. Even the short, fluttering openerTake a Number has a melody Paul Simon would be proud of and a perfectly positioned string section. The string arrangements on the album come courtesy of co-producer Mari Rubio (more eaze), and are responsible for a hugely important part of the record’s sonic make-up. Combined with Ryan Sawyer’s jazzy drums on the closing track, The Walls, the strings create a loungy, almost noirish musical space that provides an interesting contrast to the album’s more pastoral leanings.
Old Myth Dying builds from the ground up, with twinkling guitars and a descending melodic structure that finds its counterpoint in Eisenberg’s high, flighty vocals. The folky quietness belies a subtle polyrhythmic complexity that would give Joanna Newsom a run for her money. By the end, everything is enveloped in those dreamy strings again. Another Lifetime Floats Away starts as a hazy paean to a kind of nostalgic domestic bliss, like mid-seventies Joni Mitchell but softer in focus, and after a while you begin to realise that its lyrics encompass an entire life. It’s Here – a song about acceptance, growth and love – is cut through by warm ripples of steel guitar, while Curious Bird, with its gutsy, rumbling undertow (bassist Trevor Dunn is prominent here), sees Eisenberg’s vocals edge towards the freeform, straining against the structure but also delighting in it.
Eisenberg is an artist constantly in dialogue with their own profession, their songs often examining the role of creativity and the difficulties as well as the joys that come with the artistic life. On Vanity Paradox, this is embodied by one of the album’s few discordant, amelodic sections. But even this is subsumed into the greater structure of the song, with its final onrush of lyrical detail arriving like an epiphany. There is a fine line between agonised self-examination and celebration, and Eisenberg traces it in all its detail. The Ultraworld takes a more languid, brooding approach but is equally effective. In fact, different manifestations of this tension pop up on most of the album’s tracks, making the whole thing consistently interesting and constantly satisfying, the kind of album that scratches an itch you didn’t know you had. But more than that, Eisenberg has crafted ten exquisite songs and, in doing so, has cemented their place as one of the most talented musical artists of their generation.
Wendy Eisenberg (April 3rd, 2026) Joyful Noise
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