Last year’s ‘Canopy’ by NYC songwriter Rachael Sage was a big, bright, horn-assisted band record. She returns this year with ‘Under My Canopy’. This is the same set of songs, taken apart and rebuilt around acoustic guitar, cello, violin, accordion and harmonica, with two chamber-style bonus cuts bolted onto the end. It’s out today on MPress/Virgin/Universal, produced by Sage with Mikhail Pivovarov, who also mixed and mastered.
‘Under My Canopy’ earns its place for a practical reason: Sage’s lyrics were always the point, and the louder arrangements sometimes competed with them. Strip away the wah-guitar and brass and there’s nothing left to hide behind. Mostly, that’s to the songs’ advantage.
The case for the whole project rests on three songs, all in the back half. ‘Nexus’ is the most difficult to write about. Sage composed it after reading about Nex Benedict, the nonbinary Oklahoma teenager who died after a beating by classmates. The arrangement here, built on upright bass, harmonica and cello beneath her own guitar, keeps to a dignified middle register. It never swells for effect. Lines about wanting this “tide of torturousness” to mean something are delivered almost conversationally, which is exactly what makes them sting. It’s a song about mourning that refuses to wallow, and it knows the difference.
‘God Bless America’ is the album’s gamble, and Sage knows it; by her own account the idea met resistance from the people around her. Here, Irving Berlin’s standard is a deliberate set-up for what follows. Her argument is that caring enough about gun violence to demand policy change is the most patriotic thing a person can do, and the performance is sincere enough that it doesn’t read as irony or provocation. It plays as a held breath before ‘Underneath’.
‘Underneath’ then does what the title promises. Written the same day as a school shooting and first aired that night at Rockwood Music Hall, it’s the sparest thing here: Sage’s guitar, Cassandra Kubinski’s harmony, violin and cello, a touch of accordion from Rob Curto. The imagery is almost naive in its directness (guns that guard us, souls like stardust), and that’s the trick. There’s no clever angle, no attempt to be the smartest song about the subject. It just aches. The sad addendum is that, as Sage herself notes, the storyline keeps repeating, which gives a song that’s already heavy a grim permanence.
It would be easy to remember only the heavy material, but the record is smarter than that. ‘Canopy’, with Kristen Ford alongside Sage, is the mission statement and it’s a catchy one: slide guitar from James Mastro, Trina Hamlin’s harmonica, a chorus that begs to be sung back. Sage is a lifelong pacifist who has spent years being told she’s too idealistic, and the song is her answer. Its lyric about a world run by women ending war will raise eyebrows in some quarters. She expects that, and doesn’t flinch.
The production is warm and unfussy, the playing is first-rate, and the writing carries a conviction you can’t fake. It’s the sound of someone who has decided, after a long career, that being sincere is not the same as being naive. In a catalogue that has always put empathy first, this album simply says it with the lights turned down.
Tracklist:
Just Enough – Acoustic
Canopy Prelude
Canopy – Acoustic
Live It Up – Acoustic
Belong To You – Acoustic
The Best Version – Acoustic
Everyday – Acoustic
Colorized World – Acoustic
Kill The Clock – Acoustic
Nexus – Acoustic
Le Rêve
God Bless America
Underneath – Acoustic
Just Enough – Chamber Version
Everyday – Chamber Version
https://open.spotify.com/album/5jJyGuJpCEgGuKgVkvgGER?si=U8VgNhsvQ-CLGN2VLK92Mg