The Accidentals Lend A Comforting Hand With “TIME OUT (Session One)”
IN A TIME OF VAST UNCERTAINTY AND ISOLATION — The Accidentals are here to prove that music can heal all wounds. For the female-front band consisting of classically-trained musicians Savannah (Sav) Buist and Katie Larson — joined later by percussionist Michael Dause) — the global pandemic caused a cosmic shift in how the two approach their lives as musicians. Since meeting in high school orchestra, the pair have often toured almost nonstop across the country, at times playing more than 200 shows a year. Yet, with determination and a spark of creativity, they used their time within lockdown to produce a new body of work. Inspired by the sounds of Americana, folk music, and indie rock, the trio (along with collaborators such as Kim Richey, Tom Paxton, and Mary Gauthier, among others) produced the EP TIME OUT (Session One), detailing the ups and downs that quarantine holds.
TIME OUT (Session One) is a tapestry of folklore, woven together by narratives that hold drops of self reassurance, emotional snapshots of time, and an overarching theme of the exploration of grief. Each of the five songs divides into their own various stages or patterns and meet at an endpoint of healing and growth. At times, the songs are brutally honest; deeply vulnerable — but they stretch into moments of gratitude that present light at the end of the tunnel.
The EP opens up with their first single, “Wild Fire,” which is a wispy folk-inspired track that dances between lines of Gothic prose and Americana. Co-written with one the band’s musical heroes, Kim Richey, it sets the initial tones of the record. The opening lines,“Ivy climbs the walls and nestles in the brick / sparrow builds a nest above the front door,” paints a picture of the moments that seem to cease without time: the stillness and lethargy that emerge from humanity with isolation. The song captures the profound desires to turn back time — to have one more day of normal. Looking back, it questions if there is anything that one would do differently had they known the circumstances that lied ahead.
“During the songwriting process, at the time, there was a lot of conflict,” musician Sav Bruit explained. “There were a lot of literal wildfires going on, and soon enough, the Black Lives Matter movement was coming up. The world just felt so crazy and at a crossroads. But there was a moment when my family and I were sitting at the dinner table. My mom just kind of was like, ‘Yeah, sometimes it just feels like we were waiting on a wildfire,’ and I grabbed that line! I started writing a little snippet of the first verse, thinking that we would just replace the whole thing and, you know, kind of start from scratch, but we ended up working off of that. To me, it became this track that was super cathartic — it kicked off the EP. It was the first song that really sparked the idea of, ’Oh, maybe we should put out something that is going to help people heal from this time,’ because that's how we've always utilized music. It's a very therapeutic process for us — it helps get out something that we can't always put into [spoken] words.”
The next track that appears on the EP is the heart-wrenching song “Anyway,” which was co-written with Tom Paxton. Created shortly after the Capitol riots, it depicts an emotional turn of the album: a resounding uncertainty of what laid ahead, not only in our political environment, but with the loss, violence, and turmoil that had divided our nation. “There are moments [that] I feel like everybody goes through … struggling with mental health,” Bruit said, discussing the song’s background. “That was one positive that came out of this time … the stigma behind talking about mental health became more normal.
“I think there were plenty of days where people had a hard time getting out of bed, or, you know, telling the days apart, or just finding meaning within them,” Bruit elaborated. “We wanted at least one song on the record to not have a light at the end of the tunnel, as sometimes you just have to sit in the ambiguity of the day, and sort out how you feel. And that can be really, really difficult.
“Anyway, it's just one of the songs that, I think, stays very ambiguous. It's like, when when you see the sun come up, you can have two different feelings about it: you can be like, ‘It's just another sunrise, just another day; we just gotta get through it,’ or you can be like, ‘Oh, my God, what's the point? It's just another sunrise’. So that refrain is very much meant to be however you interpret it. It is truly a reflection of the times we were in.”
Over the course of the album, Bruit and Larson continue to produce a landscape that navigates through the collective thoughts and moments of the previous year. Within “Might As Well Be Gold,” Bruit and Larson (co-written with Maia Sharp) explore finding gratitude in times when things aren’t ideal. Its lines, “We get diamonds out of broken glass,” allow the listener to recognize that they can create the tools necessary to rebuild themselves and shift their perspective. Through the song, “Night Train,” the listener can then build upon the previous ideas to learn that, within the chaos of the world around us, there is still a lot of beauty to take in. Both songs arrange themselves as guides in healing.
The final track (co-written with Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris) of the EP is “All Shall Be Well,” which ends the collective narrative and thoughts of the previous year. It is a peaceful folk song, stripped back with soothing guitar melody and layered, harmonized vocals appearing throughout. Dignified and somber, as if like a hymn, it is a song of renewal and hope for our future. While not everything is going to be perfect, it shows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel — some form of calm at the end of a storm.
“To me, one of the most hopeful things is just knowing that you have more people by your side, and knowing that you have people who are there for you and identify with you,” Katie Larson explained, in the questioning of what hope looks like to her. “And I think we got a lot of that through recording this and writing it. Hope is knowing that whatever ups and downs there might be, there are always people who are going to be there for you and help you through it.”
The Accidentals did not create the EP TIME OUT (Sessions One) purely for themselves and the notion of creating music — they created this EP for anyone who has felt lost, isolated, and alone during the recent year of being within the pandemic. It is a simple hand of comfort, a hug from a friend you haven’t seen in a year. With all of the doubt and frustration that we as people have gone through, it is important to know that we will make it through to the other side. The Accidentals are just here to help with that.
The Accidentals EP, TIME OUT (Session One), released May 7, with exclusive signed vinyl pressings available on the artists’ website.
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