Imagine a small, draughty house just up from the sea. In the yard, light cuts across a simple garden. There are photographs on the walls: birds, trees, children. Inside, a woman is playing an old piano; playing her love for her children and her life, her heart-heaviness, a loving-kindness prayer for an aching world. She would, as the saying goes, prefer to light a candle than curse the darkness.
This is the energetic quality of Kim June Johnson’s exquisite new album, “Songs For a Quiet Day”. The ten songs in this collection—some small, delightful piano pieces, others like narrative poems set to music—gently invite the listener into various interactions with quiet; the quiet of waking at dawn, the quiet of children no longer being small, the quiet of a winter day spent inside with the dog, the quiet after a London air raid, the quiet of light and shadow, trees and seasons.
While Johnson carries the songs on piano and guitar and gentle layers of synth, organ and banjo evoke a tender cherishing, the addition of lush string arrangements by composer Adrian Dolan nest the songs at times, in a kind of cinematic nostalgia.
Oh To Love What Is Lovely (which borrows a line by the poet Mary Oliver) gives voice to the undeniable impermanence of things, with gardens and children as the focal point. I Wish I Had Woken With the Dawn is a brief, piercing reminder to live each day consciously instead of spending our hours on “so many things that mean nothing”. Millicent’s Song tells the story of a friendship with a flower-loving neighbour who shares her seeds. Even the cleverly-named piano instrumentals sing praises to oft-overlooked events like swimming on the first warm day of summer and walking in the wind.
Overall, the listener is blessed with a heart-lifting reminder that our days, like gardens, like seasons, like sunrises, are fleeting, so we’d better wake up and savour them.
Recorded and co-produced with Corwin Fox at Hidden Well Studio (Cumberland, BC), Songs For a Quiet Day will be released in early August, 2025 with an early video release (view here) of its single Oh To Love What Is Lovely.
The song “Oh To Love What is Lovely” took my breath away – casting a spell from the very first notes. It is almost beyond description in its beauty. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard something this moving.
-SHARI ULRICH
