Behind the smile, a sense of dread, with anxieties flowing from all emotional directions.
On her second album, Kate Prascher continues to draw from her influences: raised in Memphis, with a childhood spent amid the heart of blues music, then finding a vibrant Bluegrass scene in New York. Sunday Afternoon sees Kate Prascher straddling the line between “there”; Brooklyn, where Prascher had made home for some years and where she wrote half the album, and “here”, the upstate New York location that she has relocated to. As the songs follow a similar blend of folk and bluegrass in particular, it isn’t always easy to identify which is which; Thousand A Million sounds like a rural idyll, but also touches on a sense of indecision; Prascher has said that she saw her move to New York as a deliberate following of her ambition, so what does moving away from New York imply? And yet, there’s an acknowledgement that carrying on doing the same thing may not be the best option: “I’ve spent a thousand a million hours if I spent one“, she wistfully sings. Similarly, Retrograde, with its touching on the negative astrological effects of Mercury appearing to reverse in motion, could be a metaphor for thoughts of moving from a city to a rural location, or perhaps the doubting thoughts that come immediately after having completed that move.
The slow banjo and fiddle ballad Cold Harbour looks for emotional healing in a rural setting, blending thoughts of a separation with the unfulfilled possibilities of renewal in a new setting; there’s beauty all around, but it’s still a cold comfort as yet, tending to remind of what has been lost rather than making hopeful promises for the future. The title track hints at more of these mixed emotions, the kind that make one take to avoidance as a relationship starts to take an unhopeful turn: “here we are again / I didn’t feel like coming Sunday afternoon / I didn’t feel like coming down to you.” Bathed in Bennett Sullivan’s pedal steel, there’s a brooding sense of someone turning their emotions inwards, knowing that there’s an ending coming but wishing that it weren’t the case.
Two real standout songs are the opener, Jubilee, which is an almost perfect scene setter for what follows, pitched as it is between a sense of anticipation and a sense of dread, which twists together different strands of angst: nervousness over a relocation, the dread of an emotional separation and the hints of larger, more portentous spiritual elements. It’s a stunning song with the richest arrangement of any of the songs here. Come & Gone is almost as good, with Prascher walking a liminal line between life and death, fires sink low, trees are buried in snow, and the sun sets over the graveyard. At a walking pace, Prascher broods on a full spectrum of disquiet. Sunday Afternoon is about as far from the “difficult second album” as one can imagine. Kate Prascher’s vision may lean into the melancholic, leavened with uncertainties, but it’s what gives Sunday Afternoon a consistent tone; coupled with the excellent and restrained playing and Prascher’s beautifully pure vocals, it makes for a more than pleasing blend.
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