Abby Brown -- Heart on Fire   (click on image to watch video)

 4 May 2020

Abby Brown’s follow up to her critically-acclaimed debut EP, Gypsy Soul, kicks off with a winning, pop-inflected tune, “Every Day of My Life,” that features Brown’s soaring vocals. She has a knack for living in a song, inhabiting it and turning it inside out to deliver its emotional depth. On the chorus she declares, “you make my dark world bright,” and she makes our dark worlds brighter with her heartfelt vocals. “Every Day of My Life” contains the promise of bright, multi-hued musical gift, and Brown gracefully delivers that present to us in the rest of the album.

The title track, a gypsy rambler, dances and gallops along, celebrating the beauties and wonders of love. Brown’s vocals spiral higher and higher as they evoke the shivering and quivering moments of being drawn closer and closer to the heart of music and heart of love. The rhythmic tarantella of the song circles urgently toward the climactic embrace of lovers drawn together by the fiery heart of music. Brown delivers an affecting cover of Maren Morris’ “Sugar,” opening the tune with a two a cappella notes before elevating the song with her sure and steady vocal performance, with backing vocals by Sarah and Rachel Hambridge, and a wall of sound delivered by her band. The EP’s closing track—an acoustic version of “Love, Release Me”—features a sparser musical rendition of the same song featured on this EP with a swelling orchestral background. The acoustic version allows Brown’s vocals to shine over her guitar strums, capturing in a more heart-rending fashion Brown’s loving plea.

Heart on Fire illustrates Brown’s vocal breadth and depth and leaves us wanting a full-length album sooner than later. The songs possess a singular beauty that lovingly wraps around us and warms us in its glow.

Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

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