All Ages
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The third album from Bella White, A Sign In The Weather is a body of work steeped in the life-altering magic of its origins. While touring in support of her widely lauded sophomore LP Among Other Things (and sharing bills with the likes of Dierks Bentley, Tyler Childers, and The Red Clay Strays), the Calgary-born singer/songwriter left her home on Vancouver Island and moved to New Orleans, where she soon became happily enmeshed in the city’s vibrant indie-rock scene. As she immersed herself in the unfettered and open-hearted creativity of her newfound musical community, the 25-year-old lifelong musician began assembling a suite of songs that stretch far beyond her bluegrass roots and arrive at a moodier and more audacious breed of folk/Americana. Made with her close-knit circle of collaborators, A Sign In The Weather both echoes the homespun nature of its creation and signals a powerful evolution in her one-of-a-kind artistry.
Co-produced by White and Ross Farbe (a New Orleans-based producer/songwriter/musician who’s also worked with Esther Rose and Drugdealer), A Sign In The Weather marks a departure from the more lavish scale of Among Other Things—a 2023 release produced by Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty) and recorded with esteemed musicians like Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek. This time around, White joined forces with her longtime bandmate Patrick M’Gonigle (on fiddle) and local musicians like drummer Sam Gelband, bassist Gina Leslie, guitarist Nick Corson, and vocalist Maddy Kirgo, dreaming up a nuanced yet potent sound that spotlights the singular character of her enchanting vocals and graceful guitar work. Also featuring contributions from Farbe (on guitar, percussion, organ, and synth), pianist Duncan Troast, and Nashville-based pedal-steel player Nikolai Shveitser, A Sign In The Weather ultimately brings a bold new energy to the sophisticated musicality White first cultivated by taking up guitar at age eight (thanks in part to the influence of her father, a Virginia-born bluegrass musician who raised her on classic country and old-time music).
The latest installment in a catalog that began with her 2021 debut album Just Like Leaving, A Sign In The Weather also uncovers new layers of White’s soul-searching songwriting—an element praised by major outlets like Rolling Stone and NPR (who stated that “Sometimes the minute you hear a voice, you know it’s for the ages”). “New Orleans is such a musical city, and the experience of being around a lot of songwriters in particular has been so inspiring to me,” she notes. With its subtle interplay of poetic introspection and stream-of-consciousness outpouring, the album embodies a raw urgency that stems from White’s real-time processing of a period of intense change. To that end, A Sign In The Weather takes its title from one of the first songs written for LP: “Without Making A Sound,” an in-the-moment reflection on the painful confusion of letting go and moving on. “Right around when I decided to move I also ended a relationship—it felt like a chapter of my life was closing, and I was experiencing a lot of sadness and guilt and other big feelings,” White recalls. “When I wrote that song I was traveling somewhere that’s usually very warm, but it was like the gray gloominess of the Pacific Northwest had followed me there. It felt like it brought everything full circle to make that the album title, especially because making the choice to shake up my life really opened the floodgates for all the songs to come.”
Recorded at a shotgun house near the Mississippi River, A Sign In The Weather bears an unhurried quality that immediately transports the listener into a more serene and radiant state of mind. As shown the LP’s lead single “Little Things,” the deliberate intimacy of the album-making process imbued every aspect of White’s artistry, allowing for a more direct transmission of emotional truth. Weary but wide-eyed, the softly galloping track precisely captures the many dimensions of existential paralysis. “When I started that song I was in a limbo phase where I knew I was about to go through some big changes, but they hadn’t been mapped out for me yet,” says White, who began writing “Little Things” while still living on Vancouver Island. “To me it’s very much about recognizing that you’re not doing what you need to do, but feeling stuck and overwhelmed by the thought of getting from point A to point B.”
In its lived-in meditation on impermanence and transformation, A Sign In The Weather inhabits a pensive intensity on songs like “Stuff”—a heavy-hearted look at living with your decisions, graced with free-spirited harmonies and Shveitser’s spellbinding pedal-steel work. “I went on a trip with some of my best friends, and experiencing those dynamics again made me realize how much I’d changed,” says White. “We were out drinking martinis, having a fun girls’ night, and I started sobbing at the dinner table because everything felt so different. I think ‘Stuff’ is about recognizing the changes you’ve made and processing what that means, instead of just getting caught up in the excitement of your new life.” Next, on the gritty but tender “Dream Song,” White ruminates on the often-hidden burdens of the past. “That song came from grappling with anxiety and questions of self-worth, and asking whether I’m going to carry my past experiences in relationships into this next chapter of my life,” she says. “At the same time it’s recognizing that I’m in a beautiful relationship now, and in some ways it’s the first love song I’ve ever followed through with.”
A work of immense sensitivity, A Sign In The Weather endlessly showcases White’s gift for turning complex emotions into songs that unfold with an undeniable ease. On “False Start,” for instance, she vents her frustration at the pettiness of mindless chatter, evoking a glorious catharsis at the song’s gorgeously rambling outro. “I wrote that after the floods in North Carolina and a few other catastrophes related to climate change,” White explains. “It came from a place of feeling so sick of hearing people gossip about surface-level drama when it felt like there were more important things to talk about.” Meanwhile, the sweet and breezy “All My Friends” paradoxically emerged from a moment of restless exasperation. “I was at a music festival and felt like there was a lot of posturing going on, and I noticed how I tend to shut down in those environments,” says White. “‘All My Friends’ is about recognizing that I don’t ever want to participate in any kind of situation where I’m not being totally authentic to who I am.” And on “Pink Living Room,” White contemplates certain heartache in her past and sinks into the lovely tranquility of her current circumstances. “I was sitting in the pink living room in the house where I live now, and it was like I was in a cocoon where I felt so safe and cared for,” she says. “This pink living room felt like a physical manifestation of the gentleness I was experiencing, and the song became like a conversation where I’m telling a past version of myself, ‘Check it out—this is what it’s like now.’”
As White reveals, the journey of uprooting her life has proven to be both wonderfully disorienting and unexpectedly grounding. “Where I’m from is pretty much as far away from New Orleans as you could possibly go in North America, so it’s definitely a shock to my system sometimes,” she says. “There’s an incredible contrast between this swampy, sticky place and the mountains and the ocean back on the West Coast, and I find it really fascinating that you can feel very much at home in such different places.” And in discovering a profound sense of belonging in her new surroundings, White has unlocked a deeper understanding of her own values as an artist and musician. “I think if you have a musical community around you, people that you feel a comfort and connectivity with, there’s no need to go elsewhere or find other people to play with,” she says. “To me this album was a real labor of love and so empowering to make—it validated that I trust myself and trust my vision, and now I just want to keep doing it my way and keep working with people I believe in.”
