Since making her home in Seattle, WA in 2009, Abbey Blackwell has enmeshed herself in the myriad scenes in Washington and beyond. Moving between avant-garde, jazz, classical, rock, and pop, Abbey has been busy gigging as a bassist for a decade, playing with Seattle’s best and beyond: including La Luz, Wayne Horvitz, Macklemore, Alvvays, Jonathan Wilson, Cassandra Jenkins, and Shana Cleveland. However in the last handful of years, she has begun to focus more on composing and leading groups of her own.

Big Big Motion, Blackwell’s latest songwriting endeavor, showcases her most recent batch of songs with a new palette of sounds, provided by Ronan Delisle(electric guitar), Evan Woodle (drums), and Stephen Moore(keyboards). Blackwell has dropped one of the most stunning tracks from the new album today, “Next Time.”

The levity of the arrangement of “Next Time,” with its playful keyboard lines, bouncy guitars, and splashy cymbals, is an attempt to balance out the lyrics, which address the fleeting reality of life. Over and over, the songs on Big Big Motion bring the listener back to the unyielding quality of time and our awareness (or lack of awareness) to it. This song serves as a catchy way to remind us that this it too will drift away, as with everything.

Blackwell says, “‘Next Time’ was written in between legs of an Alvvays tour in late November 2022. It came on the heels of a School of Song class with Phil Elverum (which “Wind Watching” came from actually) and I was fighting the post-tour blues. On tour there is always a nagging feeling of wasting time, combined with (for me at least) the ego-streaked question of whether any of it matters if no one remembers us when we are gone. (Perhaps I was reading too much existentialist stuff on that tour…) All in all, this song was me trying to make sense of both myself and those around me as we shape-shift, dependent on who is there, reflecting us. 

After the live band tracking was done, I rewrote some of the lyrics to ‘Next Time’ at the studio before tracking the vocals, as the second verse had always fallen flat. I often find that the last few minutes or days before a deadline makes things click together. These days I don’t care so much if people remember me when I’m gone, but I am trying to use my time wisely and leave a good impression while I’m here.”

In contrast to the ethereal intimacy of her first record, My Maze(2023), this group balances heavy-hitting power trio energy (like on “Less Breath”) with near-unending expanses of space, drifting along at the unhurried speed of sound (as on “Note to Myself”). The diverse range of songs on Big Big Motion escort the listener along a winding road, exploring the intricacies of the ever-constant theme of Time. The naked acoustic numbers (“River or a Road”) and practically-pop songs (“Think I’ll Know It”) are each other’s foils, necessary to create a full and immersive experience amidst it all.

This album is Abbey’s first endeavor into combining a full band and songwriting. She has worked with this team of musicians previously with her band Rae, but the instrumentations for her newer songwriting approach blossomed when working with Ronan Delisle (guitar), Evan Woodle (drums), and Trevor Spencer (engineer/producer) again.

Photo Courtesy: Haley Freedlund