Right Back To It

Few songs capture the particular warmth of reunion the way this one does, with its easy, unhurried country-folk groove and a vocal interplay between Katie Crutchfield and MJ Lenderman that sounds like two people genuinely glad to be in the same room. The guitar work is clean and conversational — riffs that speak in plain American vernacular, neither flashy nor anonymous, exactly the kind of playing that rewards close listening without demanding it. The tempo sits at a comfortable mid-pace, the musical equivalent of a long drive on a flat highway with the windows down. Crutchfield's voice, reliably one of the most emotive instruments in contemporary indie folk, carries an ease here that's slightly different from her more anguished work — she sounds settled, even a little rueful in the best way. The duet dynamic gives the song a lived-in quality, two voices occasionally blending and occasionally diverging, neither trying to dominate. Lyrically the song is about the pull back toward someone or something familiar, the recognition that leaving was perhaps less necessary than it seemed. It belongs to a great tradition of Southern American music that treats emotional honesty as a form of craft. This is the song you play on a road trip back to somewhere you once called home.