Heather Woods Broderick delivers a beautifully wistful emotional travelogue on her second solo LP

What’s alluring to me – even when taking a step back at its most frustrating and depressing – is the sense of transience; that, whether it’s waiting in giddy anticipation or stewing in travel-induced aggravation, everyone sitting there shares the reality that they aren’t meant to be in the place they’re in but, ultimately, belong elsewhere.

There’s a beauty in movement and, often, it is a melancholy one. At times, fluttering from one scene to the next and, at others, pausing to stare into the infinite blackness of nights bookended by endless roads and cornfields, Heather Woods Broderick takes us on a journey of the ephemeral life of a working musician on her second solo LP, Glider. Most folks probably know Broderick as Sharon Van Etten’s right hand gal, performing keyboard duties and playing her inimitable vocal foil. It's clear in the six years since her solo debut and her roots in the experimental folk scene that Broderick has picked up some of Van Etten’s traits.

While Glider features direct, unfussy arrangements and peerless vocal harmonies akin to Van Etten's, one would be remiss to view it as a clone. It is a swooning, whispering delight, impressive to the extent that one would be even further remiss to continue primarily viewing Broderick as Van Etten’s background vocalist. Having gestated over several years, Glider shuffles us through gauzy reflections on Broderick’s personal relationships with a pervasive air of restlessness. It’s lost, disoriented, wistful but never sad. Whether through dripping panes of reverb or the deep spaciousness of silence, Broderick often seems to be reaching us from a distance; she herself even confesses on “Desert” that she “heard through the ether…a melancholy cue”.

Broderick’s compositions are impossibly sparse, often nothing more than she and a piano or solitary finger-picked guitar. It’s a boon to the display of her vocal prowess, highlighting her enchanting harmonies and the elasticity of her tone. It’s also shrewd in its ability to juxtapose the various instrumental accents that creep in, from the enveloping synth of “Fall Hard” to the brass swells joining walls of guitar echo in “Wyoming”. As suspended in the clouds as Glider often is, there is a tangible humanity to the emptiness felt in the wandering, a point Broderick is quick to remind us of in the opener, “Up In The Pine”, declaring that she “can feel red blood moving around”.

Broderick time and again references travel, movement, and places on Glider, befitting its hovering sonic nature. On the penultimate title track, spiraling flutes herald a break in the clouds and Broderick finds some resolve in her simple mantra of “I’ve had enough”, pointing to a pending denouement of sorts to her physical and emotional rambling. Indeed, closer “All For A Love” is a stark confrontation with the cold reality of dissolving a mutually loving relationship for the sake of its constituents, with Broderick offering:

“There’s a lot to love for / but why should you wait it out / when I can feel our love is dragging you down”

And what was another bare-boned, twinkling waltz cannily morphs into sweaty, tear-stained guitar and trumpet driven soul over the final 90 seconds. It’s a prologue reminder of that “red blood moving around” Broderick whispered to us about nearly 40 minutes earlier.

Summer songs are great, but their appeal is fleeting and don’t serve us too well come that first bluster of winter air. Glider is an album for all seasons, from star-gazing on a humid summer’s night to blanketed winter evenings beside the fire. And, come the short days and long nights later this year, we’ll look back on it as one of 2015’s best.