This Is Lorelei – The Singer in My Band

It suddenly happens to some artists before they even realise it. That moment when, for someone like Nate Amos, your music resonates so strongly that you suddenly get recognised as an indie rock maven. Before his solo project, This Is Lorelei, took off, he’d practically put Brooklyn on the map with the impenetrable art-pop duo Water From Your Eyes—a project with such wild range that it can’t quite be contained in an album’s worth of material. But similar to MJ Lenderman, Amos’ classic rock sensibilities—particularly of the country-folk kind—translate into a solo career that is greatly more palatable.

It also comes very naturally to him. Sharing a musical gene with his father, veteran bluegrass musician Bob Amos, Amos treats the more earthy-sounding The Singer In My Band with great reverence for the music he was brought up on. But even when a great many of these songs take a formalist approach, Amos layers them with deceptive simplicity. An opener as “I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light” modernises the enduring sorrow of the Stanley Brothers as he unapologetically admits to his faults: “I know there must be better men, but I’m not the kind to hide.” And yet, over the song’s simple backbeat, there is a painful distance in his delivery that lends the confession a sense of humility.

Reminiscent of more recent yet still distant eras, particularly the birth of alt-country and the narrative-heavy folk implosion of the mid-2000s, Amos finds quirks within impeccably melodic songwriting. The barroom romps of “Watching Heaven Fall” and the title track capture tradition at their core, far removed from the shifting electronic tones of his breakout, 2024’s Box for Buddy, Box for Star. The rootsy “Sailing (Your Baby’s Down),” with its descending guitar lines reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo, expresses in simple terms the emotional breadth of staying with someone through changing conditions: “Darling, I would serve your time/I want to go sailing/shiver in your storm.” His songs, like those of all great songwriters, initially breeze by, yet reveal greater depth upon closer inspection.

Amos’ soft vocal timbre particularly stands out on the album’s more folk-driven tracks, such as the strings-accented “Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever,” one of the rare occasions in which he showcases his fingerpicking abilities. These quiet, offbeat pivots are few and far between, but when they emerge—like on the grief-ridden standout “Oh No Now My”—you’re left wishing he’d explore further the haunting possibilities already lurking within his themes. The pitch-shifting details and taut arrangements might inevitably draw comparisons to artists like Alex G, and fairly so, but there’s also a spiritual kinship with Sparklehorse in the way he enlivens empty spaces with subtle spectral touches.

Without knowing Amos’ background, it would be easy to mistake the direction he takes on The Singer in My Band for an affectation—an attempt to appeal to critical circles. That said, no one person could pull off such a straightforward ramshackle like the tender “And I Haven’t Seen My Love in Quite a While” without an instinctive feel for the form. There’s plenty here to suggest he was raised on a steady diet of Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, after all. Amos has previously expressed feeling overwhelmed by the attention he’s received, particularly as his This Is Lorelei moniker began as an outlet to fully be himself. It’s only going to get louder, I’m afraid. Such unplanned surprises emerge only when the music is given the freedom to speak for itself.

The Singer in My Band is out now via Matador.