Daughter (2020)

While out driving, a mother finds her teenage daughter walking along the side of a country road, picks her up, then finds herself coming to terms with the devastating notion that even though she is sitting right next to her, she has lost her forever.

Daughter is the second single and video released by Boston singer-songwriter and song collector Kass Richard’s debut solo album The Language Shadow. (Good Cry Records.)

The video for Daughter was Co-directed by Kassie Richardson and Lindsey Martin. Lindsey and Kassie grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains and have known each other for decades.

Following an overactive tour schedule with U.S. Girls, Richards was one among a scattering of musicians chosen by Meg Remy to help record her acclaimed Heavy Light (4AD) album at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango studio. Witnessing Remy and co-producer Basia Bulat co-ordinate into life a set of stunningly reflective songs was the ignition moment for Richards, consolidating a framework for the creation of The Language Shadow.

Crossing the Canadian border again once Heavy Light had wrapped, Richards found herself in communion with a skeleton crew of holdovers from the initial U.S. Girls sessions, including engineer Shae Brossard. They kept the chemistry of that session alive, tracking Kass’ vocals and uitar live before improvising the subtly refined arrangements further. The result is an album of timeless honesty— a contemporary echo cast north from the Blue Ridge Mountains (the area Richards is originally from) up to a cold Canadian city, a candle lit that dimly guides a path of reflection; songs as gifts that seek to be shared in mournful times.

Born in the Shenandoah Valley just east of Patsy Cline’s home town (a common weary Virginian break of the voice may be detected), Richards made use of the Blue Ridge Mountains in orienting herself as a youth. She found a similar guiding familiarity in the Irish, Scottish and British balladry adapted by the Appalachian region in generations past. The meanings ingrained in this people-powered storytelling music was molecularly absorbed. The simple integrity of the arrangements that compose The Language Shadow complement a plainspoken-ness in the face of sorrow.

Produced in part by Basia Bulat (a fellow singer who revels in the personal reinvention of folk forms), open resonances from Richards’ nylon string and Appalachian dulcimer playing are complemented by spare cello and organ lines. The occasional presence of treated guitar (played by Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury), mellotron (U.S. Girls’ Geordie Gordon) and spare synth playing by Bulat provide for a spare, at times eerie updating on a classical approach.