Clearing

If "Ruins" is devastation documented, "Clearing" is what comes after — not resolution exactly, but the particular stillness of exhaustion, the way a room feels after a long cry. Harris's guitar here is acoustic, the playing barely-there, arpeggiated figures that circle a few notes without committing to melody. The reverb is lighter than on some of her work, giving the recording a quality of greater presence: you feel closer to the source, which is at once more intimate and more uncomfortable. The emotional register is one of tentative return — to the body, to the immediate environment, to the possibility of future experience. The word "clearing" carries both its landscape meaning (an open space in forest) and its process meaning (the act of becoming less clouded), and Harris earns both. This is music for mornings after, for the specific delicacy of days that follow difficult ones. At seven or eight minutes it overstays its welcome just slightly, which is itself emotionally accurate.