Alice Wallace - Here I Am
(Mule Kick Records, 2024)
After a decade of trying to get traction with her career in southern California, singer/songwriter Alice Wallace moved to Nashville just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic. That put a hard stop on her career, giving her time the pause and process life: transition, love, heartbreak, renewal, and triumph. This process led to Here I Am, an amazingly mature contemporary country recording that avoids Nashville’s tendency to overproduce its product into the musical equivalent of potted meat with two shakes of Tabasco sauce. Drummer Nick Buda wielded a conservative production hand that avoided most of the overproduction acts that Sarah Shook and Morgan Wade experienced once they became corporate.
With a simple band and humble arrangements, Wallace tells her story against well-played contemporary country music. Writing her songs, Wallace avoids the Nashville quagmire of songwriters churning out cute lyrics salvaged from every blues double-entendre and Tin Pan Alley source. Her lyrics are honest. Joy, pain, confusion, and clarity, all are represented in this finely crafted album containing these lyrics:
“Stonehenge is waiting for sunrise
Like the dandelions wait for the wind
The Pharaohs were buried with secrets
That beg to be puzzled again
But me, I’m waiting for nothing
And everything at the same time
Trying so hard to get somewhere
When I’ve already arrived
I am all of it, and I am none of it
The greatest mystery in all of history
And still so insignificant
A grain of sand
in some greater plan
With lungs breathe and a heart that beats
In ways I don’t understand
Here I am”