by Delia Rainey (@hellodeliaaaaa)
Hemlock’s music connects with coincidences. I’ve only caught Hemlock, an emerging DIY folk artist, in brief moments of transition. Most recently, I saw a part of their set at a documentary festival in Missouri, one of their first stops before their recent tour around SXSW. After Hemlock’s heart-filled songs, five short films of the fest played on the screen behind them, all based around North American found objects, performance, and migration. The other time was last summer, when they had just moved to Chicago and I was just about to move away, I saw Hemlock play a few songs in Humboldt Park in a song-sharing circle. Everyone was sitting on the grass and passing around the guitar. I heard their tunes across a buggy field, and the lively motion of their songwriting hissed into me.
Hemlock is Carolina Chauffe, a musician and songwriter born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana who currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Chauffe has been putting out music on Bandcamp as Hemlock since 2018, with nearly six self-released demos that they identify as “phone-fi” bedroom folk. Most notably are their one-song-a-day albums, which Chauffe managed to do for three months of three different years: February 2019, December 2020, and August 2021. By creating something quickly everyday, a song-challenge tends to produce the best experimental work. The most recent August album especially shows Chauffe’s expansive songwriting. They capture the mood of melancholy summer and creaky rooms at night, using the intimacy and accessibility of the phone voice memos app. These demos exhibit haunting scraps of piano compositions, and Hemlock’s signature swerving guitar melodies and twangy yet careful voice. Hemlock’s vocalization texture feels in the family of Jessica Pratt, Adrianne Lenker, Renée Reed, or fellow-Chicagoan Tenci. In the Bandcamp notes, Chauffe writes a fragmented explanation of these fragmented songs: “an unmixed, unfinished, intentional, noisy, hopeful mess / a month that slipped right thru my fingers again, somehow.”
Talk Soon, Hemlock’s latest self-released album, was recorded in Astoria, Oregon, where Chauffe was living during one year of the pandemic. This work differs from her other projects in its production, collaboration, and fullness. Chauffe was assisted in the recording process and instrumental accompaniment by friends Olaf Ydstie, Casey Klep, and Laith Scherer, with mastering done by Vin Christopher at Heavy Meadow Sound in Portland, Oregon. While Hemlock’s phone diaries exist solely online, Talk Soon can be held and listened to tangibly as an object. The tape and CD features a cover photo of Carolina standing against the edge of a body of water with husky loops of yellowed grass. This could easily be a Louisiana swamp or the Humboldt Park lake in Chicago. Hemlock’s music is designed this way - to constantly be traveling to a different town, unidentified where, as all the touring and transient moving of Chauffe’s life meld into one narrative. The phone is still an important element in this release; an audio notebook, a nimble capturer of memories and shifting moments in time. Throughout the seventeen tracks, Chauffe braids in windy field recordings and features a selection of voicemails from long-distance family and friends, reaching for each other: just calling to see how you’re doing, I hope all is well.
One of the singles and one of the strongest songs, “Garbage Truck,” begins with warm guitar strumming like a highway passing as Chauffe admits, “I’ve always been so afraid of the things I can’t control.” Additional bass, flute sound, and symbols crashing appear in the chorus, “I wanna be a better person to you,” the “you” emphasized with Chauffe’s unique vocal tone. In “Silver City Embers,” Chauffe’s songwriting takes a rhythmic turn, with a clock-time drum machine, flamenco-feeling guitar, then easing into a waltz. Something about the album as a whole feels sleepy and whispering – like a long conversation at night, or trying to fall asleep at a stranger’s house on tour. Mundane actions filter through the lyrics – changing the sheets, cooking rice, lighting candles, braiding hair, and remembering a dream. Hands make pat-pat sounds against Carolina’s strings and voice (“Autumn”), as well as a pedal steel vibration and a soft horn (“Sheets”), blended like a faraway feeling. In “Songbird,” Chauffe’s voice shows great range with delicateness snapping at the edges. They sustain a prolonged note with expert control, crooning the word “cry” into a long ribbon of vocal sound. The articulation of language carves the album as much as the familiar and winding guitar. In “To Carry (feat. Laith),” as Chauffe sings “we carry our pain,” we can feel the “pain” like a straight line, the vowel hitting bitter. But most of these songs have a bright center, a realization – “feel it in the fog / hear it in your laughter / swim in your forgiveness…” – call, a prayer.
In-between Hemlock’s longings are these generous calls from loved ones. Talk Soon even begins with Chauffe’s mom’s love-filled message, just as important as the pieces of songwriting. The voicemails must've come from a time when Chauffe was traveling and playing shows, or transitioning to new parts of life (they moved to Oregon, Denver, and Chicago throughout the past three years). A poignant voicemail comes from a friend named Saul. There’s something about his words, acknowledging that Chauffe is leaving that day and he didn’t get to say goodbye, that encapsulates the momentary mood of the album: “Stay in touch.” Pawpaw’s voicemails add grandpa charm and a southern meter, as his messages seem to rhyme into songs themselves about Chauffe’s travels – “on the road … between El Paso … swimming in Lake Tahoe .. and beyond … the Mississippi Gulf coast…” As one of his voicemails ends, Chauffe responds with her song, “Talk Soon,” the album’s namesake: “Sorry I don’t call you when I say I’m gonna call you.” A voicemail implies a missed connection, when we are far from those we want to be with, when our lives don’t quite match up. Perhaps with this album, Chauffe wants to reassure these callers that they’re thinking about them; that even when separated, they can be close.
One of the strongest songs, “Green,” begins with a deep sigh. It’s just Carolina with guitar plucking up and down, with confident vocals curling, before the alien glow of keys and chorusy guitar. In the track, a deep altered voice can be heard singing, like an other-self or memory trying to push through. It’s a weird snarly dream, a ghost song. There’s an image described of a sudden pile of snow, bound to melt and disappear, on an empty passenger seat, “where you sat.” The window had been rolled down to say goodbye and flurries must’ve busted in. It’s all a perfect metaphor for fleeting memories and people, and the random decision to track it down.