Porchlight is Paige Anderson’s first release since becoming the sole frontperson of Two Runner, a folk duo which began life in 2020 when she met her former bandmate Emilie Rose. The duo toured extensively, both nationally and internationally, releasing their debut album, Modern Cowby, in 2023. While Emilie stepped away from life on the road in 2025, she makes an appearance on Porchlight. The release also follows the end of a long-term romantic relationship and, so perhaps not surprisingly, the song themes encompass transition, loss, and journeys – both literal and personal – while also embracing the potential of a future as yet unknown. Despite dealing with the ambiguity of a new start, this is a fully assured sophomore release, built on songs that blend personal confessionals alongside more rollicking hymns.
Opener and title track, Porchlight, has Anderson intoning: “How many times have you left, A life you’ve always known?/Failed, derailed, with too much to tell, Washing through your bones?” Softly strummed with gentle fiddle accompaniment, its world-weary vocal depicts, in vivid detail, a relationship turned sour and the need to move on and embrace a life elsewhere. It feels like an intimate confessional and is a perfect way to draw this listener into the album’s remaining 11 tracks.
Follow-up, Roadrunner, motors along on Anderson’s banjo and guitar, Emilie Rose’s fiddle, Lucas Lawson’s bass and Daniel Young‘s drums – a warm, unhurried piece of bluegrass that helps anchor the record, its chorus urging the listener to “jump on over the line, like a roadrunner making up time.” By lead single, Strawberry Rhinestone, we’re into more typical singer-songwriter territory. The song feels like the centrepiece of the album, a tune that Anderson says emerged out of a chance encounter when she was in a dive bar in Salt Lake City, and a woman with neon green hair walked in and turned on the film, Electric Horseman: “So you went to your favorite dive bar,Turned the TV on ‘Electric Horseman’/His heart changed like the seasons, And nobody needs that pain”. It’s a number that positively rattles along; its inspiration founded on palomino dreams and bar-room heartbreak. In contrast, it offers reassurance for anyone who happens to be unlucky in love – its message the equivalent of “there are plenty more fish in the sea” – because “the good ones are hanging somewhere around”.
The upbeat-sounding Punk Rock Bar (“If you don’t take a chance you’ll never find out”) and Mocking Crow, with its insistent fiddle (“your heart knows what you need”), both continue the more optimistic theme of love being something of a gamble with the heart, but where the risk is always worth the roll.
By contrast, Witch Well begins as an account of Anderson’s trip to a small town in eastern Arizona, following her relationship breakdown, when she happened to chance upon a liquor store with a painting of a witch in the window on the side. Wanting to take a photo of the building, Anderson decided instead to capture the scene on her return trip two days later, only to find that the store had been bulldozed. This road trip, and the resulting song, ends up as a metaphor for Anderson’s own personal relationship journey and this introspective song proves another winner on a record that hits consistent highs: “Why do you keep on runnin’ girl?/You’re chasing something you cannot catch/A game that has no end, And he always wins”.
The joyous and jaunty musical tone of Late Dinner is at odds with its opening lyrical content (“You pulled the hope right out from under me, Worst part was I tried and tried way too hard”). Still, Anderson’s positivity means that better things are to be found further down life’s menu, a full turnaround from the loss she first experienced on the album’s opening title track: “Till someone new shows up on your porch one day, To kiss your face, to dance around”.
Crazy dreams and motorcycle rides were motifs on Two Runner’s debut album, in particular, the song, Wild Dream, and these themes get another run out on the song, Helmet, its filmic sensibilities and widescreen lyrics graphically capturing the allure of the open road, its soft opening giving way to more insistent fiddle and guitar rhythms which perfectly mimic the speeding of a motorcycle on the highway: “There’s a bend in the sky in mid July, And it seems we gotta’ run to chase the sun/ So I take a breath, and tighten the straps of my helmet”.
Expertly mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk and produced by Oz Fritz, the quality of story songs such as Witch Well and Helmet is matched by the beautiful yearning at the heart of more personal numbers which close out the back end of the record, such as Missed Calls, Burn Out, and Five Minutes. In the latter, there’s a proper appreciation of the virtues of time passing, and the nascent hope that always exists when new opportunities present themselves.
Album closer, Bridge, feels like a ruminative and more stoic finalé about the end of a relationship – nostalgia twinned with the need to move on. It’s a fitting conclusion to this fine record from a performer who is clearly a burgeoning talent with an even more promising future.
Two Runner (August 28th, 2026) Gar Hole Records
UK / IE / FR Tour Dates
supporting Alena Diana
09.30 – Dublin, IE – Whelan’s
10.01 – Glasgow, UK – Saint Luke’s
10.02 – Manchester, UK – The Stoller Hall
10.03 – Bristol, UK – Bristol Beacon
10.04 – London, UK – EartH
10.08 – Saint-Germain-En-Laye, FR – La Clef
10.09 – Saint-Étienne-Du-Rouvray, FR – Théâtre Le Rive Gauche
10.10 – Laval, FR – 6PAR4
10.14 – Mâcon, FR – SMAC – La Cave à Musique
10.15 – Amiens, FR – La Lune des Pirates
10.16 – Bruz, FR – The Cultural Centre Grande Logis
10.17 – Hérouville-st-clair, FR – Big Band Cafe