With a resume that includes being a part of bands such as Alvvays and musicians like Haley Heynderickx and Cassendra Jenkins, Abbey Blackwell is focusing her energies on writing for solo guitar and voice. After sharing “Next Time,” Blackwell has released the next single from her upcoming album Big Big Motion titled “River or a Road.”

Blackwell said about the single: “”River or a Road” was written September 2022 after a fairly busy summer of festival one-offs with Haley Heynderickx and right before a long tour with Alvvays. Home for a week or so, I was thinking a lot about a guy I had just met at a festival, who I soon started dating cross-country. I was at the precipice of the grind of living on the road *ahem* and flying across the country once a month to see him, and it was all a big ball of confusion and anticipation. 

In writing this song, I was putting into words my (albeit facile) realization that when we are apart from our loved ones, we are only left with the words and images they’ve scattered around us. And they’re only left with what we have given them. Hopefully it was something worthwhile and positive for us to turn over again and again like a polished stone, reexamining in the light.

The video was animated, directed by, edited (the works) by Dillon Sturtevant, a buddy I have played with in bands throughout the years. We wanted to collaborate on a video for this record since he is a masterful animator, and he felt like this song in particular would be great for his hand-drawn style of animation combined with some of my watercolors. His focus was to reinforce the meditative longing that propels the song forward, and as the video progresses, shift from literal images of the physical world to abstract expressions more evocative of time and space.

Dillon synthesized all of the ephemeral feelings and thoughts from the song and filtered them into these beautiful images. I feel like the video magnifies everything I was trying to get across in all the right ways.”

Blackwell’s songwriting calls back to the lyrical, hanging melodies of Sibylle Baier and Linda Perhacs, with angular, geometric chord progressions that lean in satisfying directions. Rendered through a self-assured and distinctive musical vocabulary, her songs offer an inspired and idiosyncratic take on “personal” songwriting, with insights into the central pressure points of human experience that run deeper than transparently confessional. 

Big Big Motion showcases Blackwell’s most recent batch of songs with a new palette of sounds, provided by Ronan Delisle(electric guitar), Evan Woodle (drums), and Stephen Moore(keyboards).

Photo Courtesy: Haley Freedlund