A Part of Me In You
It’s not easy. It is not forever.
And I am always coming back to that. Over the last two years specifically. An attempt to show myself some grace. As a reminder. A reminder that the moment you are in—it isn’t always going to feel this way.
On the telephone, my best friend’s voice, weighed down with concern, but there is also an understanding, and a compassion in it. She tells me, often—more often than perhaps she wants to. “This is not forever.”
It’s not easy. And I think about how, in time, the reflections of yourself that you see within something will shift. There is still meaning, yes. Poignancy. Resonance. The meaning, then, moves alongside you. You carry it with you.
It’s not easy.
And for a number of years I had a fraught relationship with alcohol. The way I would, out of the corner of my eye, watch the clock, waiting for 5 p.m.—the time of day that I had bargained with myself it was acceptable to have a drink.
The surprising ease with which the first drink would disappear. The bottle, or can, tossed into the recycling.
The surprising ease with which I would, then, have a second. And the brief flash of hesitation before, as the evening progressed, I would often and inevitably have a third.
It’s not easy. And on the telephone, it was not easy to hear my best friend’s voice, when she told me, “Someone with as many mental health issues as you have shouldn’t be drinking at all let alone as much as you are.”
It’s not easy. You surrender yourself, though, in a sense. To change. To grow. Something I have come to understand is that the work we must put into ourselves never ends. It’s not easy. And it was humbling to acknowledge. The fraught relationship with alcohol. The day before New Year’s Eve, 2023, I decide to abstain. Dry January, it’s often called. Not easy. Not forever. January turns into February. Winter into spring. Autumn becomes winter. One year ends the next begins. Spring into summer. Another year begins. You show yourself grace, as you are able. A reminder.
It’s not forever.
It does become easier in time.
It’s not easy. It is not forever. And I am always coming back to that. A reminder that the moment you are in—it isn’t always going to feel this way, though there are times when it is difficult, and if not difficult, it seems impossible to imagine this reality. We find ourselves stuck in a moment that has overstayed. The humbling admittances we must make. Embarrassing, in a way, to have to be this unabashedly revealing. A feeling that is hard to explain or articulate, and the depth, or a darkness, that you are uncertain as to how, or when, you will find your way back from. The voice on the telephone that reminds you “This is not forever,” but also confesses, regularly, “I’m worried about you.”
It is not forever. I come back to that. I try to show myself grace.
*
And I am always talking about enormity. The size, and the scope. The heights a song, or an entire album, can soar to. The impressive, admirable, and thoughtful way—meticulous, really, something can build until it ascends, and in that ascension, how it can be suspended and sustained. The way a moment hangs, and how we often want to stay in it for as long as we are able. The way something can completely envelop us, and how we are often simply in awe of it as it is happening.
And in this enormity. This size and scope. The voluminous nature. There is this balance struck between tension and release. There’s a sense that, within this, the stakes are high. There’s an urgency and an immediacy. I’m always thinking about that. The emergent feeling that ripples through a song, or surges through an album. In the enormity, there is this challenge, or a push. A push towards something much larger than yourself. The challenge lies in how you get there. What that sounds like. And maybe more importantly, or at least more fascinating to me, as a listener, is what the challenge feels like.
Something that I am regularly compelled by, and find genuinely interesting, is how you can hear, over time, the growth in an artist. The way they become more confident, and mature into themselves. And where, in this growth, or confidence, they wish to take us, if we allow it. If we open ourselves up. And there is a staggering amount of growth and confidence found across If I Let It Quiet—a remarkable, kaleidoscopic album that is bold and fearless and simply just enormous in its sound and scope—nearly every song climbing just absolutely towering heights.
If I Let It Quiet is enormous yes, but in its enormity, it is a very human and introspective album—in how often it turns itself inward, it asks us, as listeners and participants, to do that as well. An album that you can both lose yourself, and find yourself in. Which is at least part of its intention.
*
I think about how, in time, the reflections of yourself that you see within something will shift. There is still meaning. Of course. A poignancy and a resonance. The meaning moves alongside you. You carry it with you. It often meets you where you are. It often finds you when you need it.
I think about the second half of “Earthquake Song” all of the time. The penultimate track from Josaleigh Pollett’s third full-length, In The Garden, By The Weeds. The song is structured into two acts, or movements—and there is this looseness to how the first half of it wanders, or floats. I am remiss to say there is no rhythm, but it feels like there is little, if anything, guiding it, as Pollett slowly, and deliberately, delivers their evocative and observational lyrics, accompanied by this minimal, undulating layer of low, buzzing synthesizer, courtesy of their collaborative partner, Jordan Watko.
In the second half, though, the tone lightens. There’s this wonky melody that is plunked out on the keyboard, and a skittering, clattering percussive element is introduced, giving the song more momentum as it builds, gradually, towards this shimmering moment of catharsis.
I think about the second half of “Earthquake Song” all of the time—and the single line that Pollett repeats throughout the song’s final two minutes. “I can see the good in anything—do you want me to?” Because I think about all of the ways that it can be interpreted. Because there is this pleading. It’s there, of course, from the first time the line is sung but it slowly becomes more apparent each time it is uttered. And there is this growing sense of urgency to it, every time it is asked. A kind of desperation, in the end. I think about this line all of the time. The way it, without pausing, moves from this declaration into a question, both of which feel emergent.
I think about how the meaning of something shifts. The poignancy and the resonance move alongside you. Meeting you where you are. Finding you when you need it. It’s not easy. It is not forever. And I think about how things feel, right now, and how they have felt for such a long time already. It is not forever. And I think about the desperation with which I often find myself grasping towards small, good things. Clutching as tightly as I can to whatever glimmers of hope, however fleeting they might be, I am able to find.
The good in anything.
I can see the good in anything.
Do you want me to?
*
I hesitate, slightly, to say that things no longer excite me the way they, perhaps, once did. Films. Books. Music. It isn’t that I am totally disinterested in these things. But rather, it has become more of a challenge to find things that I am truly enthusiastic, or passionate about. That not only attracts my attention but demands it. Capture it. And in that enthusiasm, and in that passion, it has become even more of a challenge for me to find things that are resonant. Or that resonate in the way that I wish for them to. Something that offers the poignancy and the thoughtfulness I am always looking for. The way in—the way to make something personal. Introspective.
The way that I am almost always looking for reflections of myself, however small and however unflattering, in something I read. Something I watch. Something I listen to.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—If I Let It Quiet, Josaleigh Pollett’s fourth full-length album, is a bold, declarative artistic statement. It’s a gigantic sonic leap forward for Pollett, teaming again with their creative partner Jordan Watko. The kind of album that overwhelms the senses, and quickly pulls you into the robust, vivid, textural world it effortlessly creates and manages to sustain across its runtime. The kind of remarkable album—truly imaginative and wondrous in how it unfolds, that ignites something in you. Captivates you from the moment it begins. It, with great ease, grabs onto the enthusiasm and passion that is so challenging to reach within and fine, and in grabbing onto it, refuses to let go.
It is also an inherently personal album. Revealing up to a point. As revealing as Pollett wishes to be with us, as listeners. An album that, yes, you can catch glimpses of yourself in. An album that offers a stark, though graceful, examination of the human condition. That is the thing about If I Let It Quiet. That even in the intricate, dizzying layers of sound it carves out, it never ceases in how it offers us this glimpse at a window into ourselves. A way to give consideration to our experiences. How, and why, we have arrived at this moment. A reminder about the work that we must continue to put into ourselves. The reminder that it isn’t easy, and that it is not forever. The reminder that, when we are asked to look, there are these small, good things, to be found and to behold.
*
Memory is a fickle thing
And this is something I do often consider. Memory. What we choose to remember. How we choose to remember it. If we’ve misremembered something. The how and why we choose, in time, to forget things. Why a memory might come back to us. Why specific instances or events or moments remain clearer when the years surrounding them have blurred almost entirely. A house in Michigan. A loose tooth. A knotted shoelace. A surprising outburst of emotion and a slammed door. Stale cigarettes and floorboard creaks. A hushed conversation not intended to be overheard. A broken dinner plate. Moving boxes in the hallway. A dining room table full of things to be sold. The years measured out carefully in these fragments.
Memory is a fickle thing. What we remember and how we remember it. The concern, at times, is whether we have become an unreliable narrator in our own lives.
There is of course an intersection—perhaps a dangerous one, between memory and nostalgia. The way memory might soften something. The way we extend our arms, and hands, and fingers, as far as they might go—stretching to a place of discomfort, to grasp something from the past. I think about this quote from Hanif Abdurraqib. “I’ve told you before: nostalgia is a relentless hustler. Relies on how bad anyone wants to retrieve a feeling, or even an idea of a feeling.”
“Radio Player,” tucked within the second half of If I Let It Quiet, exists in a convergence—the space where memory and nostalgia intersect, and what happens when you wish to unpack, or work through, something specific. A memory. A feeling. Something misremembered, maybe. Though maybe not. A grasping, or clawing, towards a better understanding. Originally released in October of 2025 as a standalone single, Pollett described the song as being loosely about “seeing the movie Poltergeist at too young an age.”
“It is a song about love and protection,” they continued. “And remembering and forgetting.”
Within the convergence that “Radio Player” exists in, a balance is carefully struck and impeccably sustained—opening with a sense of something that is not quite menacing, exactly, but certainly feels unsettling, or ominous, the song does, rather quickly, shift and oscillate into something larger, and bolder—but even in the way it will build, and brightly swirl and dazzle, it manages to retain that initial sensation of dread, or trepidation, looming just at the edges. A memory uncovered, or revisited, and the uncertainty that follows in the instance of reflection that occurs.
I am remiss to say “Radio Player” unfolds like a nightmare, or becomes nightmarish in how it sounds, but it does pace itself in such a deliberate way—thriving in the haze that comes from conjuring the sensation of being half asleep. The way you second-guess yourself as you teeter between dreaming and waking life. It begins on that edge of tension, with a low, thudding beat creating a rhythm, while atmospheric sounds woosh and squiggle around until the song’s melody is introduced—mournful and distorted-sounding, and distant, feeling like it is coming from another room and you are pressing your ear flat against the wall, straining yourself in an effort to make it out. And it is on top of these layers, that Pollett’s voice arrives—quietly, with some hesitation, singing the opening line.
“Radio player, I fell asleep,” they begin, with the first verse seeming to hold up a funhouse mirror to the sounds that continue to writhe around underneath. “Drums in the basement, turn up the TV,” Pollett continues. “I tried to listen to what they were playing—I tried to sing in my sleep. Radio player, do you listen to me?”
And there is a fascinating thing that occurs. A tension, just on the cusp of release. Waiting. We, then, wait alongside it. For this moment when the song will explode and ascend. A kind of blinding light that creates an arresting contrast with the narrative Pollett weaves in their lyricism. They solemnly ask the question, “Do you listen to me?” and this shift occurs. Intentional. Sudden. A second melody arrives, coming from a different synthesizer tone—this one a little antiquated and blippy in how it sounds, as it grabs hold of everything and pulls the song into what feels like just a slightly different rhythm. A little slower. More precise or measured. Remaining there until a ripple of feedback, and the sharp, clattering percussive sounds slide into place, pushing it just a little closer to that moment of release.
And this haze that the song’s narrative exists in—a state between dreaming and waking, Pollett, the further into “Radio Player” we are taken, colors and punctuates their vocals with this heightened sense of danger. This intensity that is palpable, rippling to the surface quickly on specific lines, creating an urgent feeling to the vivid narrative that is depicted, all while the music continues to build with a smoldering ferocity—the bubbling of the keyboards, layered with meticulous thought; the tumbling, jittery percussion, pinging off of its surroundings; the edge and snarl of the bursts of guitar feedback that cascade.
There is a brief reprieve from the forward momentum and growing immediacy that Pollett wishes to convey with “Radio Player”—a humanized, or more organic-sounding moment, when most of the layers recede and we are left with Pollett’s warm, tender voice, and the folksy strum of the acoustic guitar—the minimal accompaniment, here, allowing the gravity of this verse to resonate. “The house isn’t there anymore and I don’t know if it ever was,” Pollett explains. “But memory is a fickle thing when you cope with the damage like us—radio player, look what we’ve done.”
I hesitate to describe the ending of “Radio Player” as triumphant, but there is this surge—this profundity, that occurs, both sonically, and within the way Pollett delivers their lyrics. It works to create something that is rather stirring. Powerful. The song itself becomes relentless as it builds upon itself, heading into the final moments. This sense of danger, or immediacy, growing more intense, reflected in the oscillation and torrential nature of the instrumentation, and in Pollett’s voice, and how they convey this portion of the narrative. “When I fell asleep it was fine,” they try to explain. “Now the dog is crying out with a feeling and the clock stopped blinking at four, and a wonderful light tries to open the door—but I put my back into it,” they continue, a breathlessness and urgency rising quickly into their voice. “And a heart inside is gleaming. And I hear it say it loves me but it wants me to stay dreaming.”
Memory is a fickle thing. And “Radio Player,” in its final exhalation, ends with a confession, and an ask—“I told you that I saw a ghost,” Pollett sings quietly. “I just need you to believe me.”
*
And something that is a marvel every time it happens on If I Let It Quiet, and it happens throughout the album’s 10 proper tracks, is the way Pollett and her collaborators are able to not so much “build something from nothing” exactly, in the way a song is shaped, but the way they are able to, with great intention and though, start small, and work their way out until it is brought to the point where it does soar—whatever that looks like. Or sounds like. Or feels like. A song like “Radio Player” rides the perpetual edge of tension and release, where it is propelled forward just enough to the next place where it ascends, or becomes more voluminous.
And a song like “We All Got it Right” begins from a place that feels like a secret that someone is on the cusp of sharing with you before it remarkably evolves into the most explosive, boisterous song on the record.
The sound design, at the top of “We All Got it Right” is one of the most compelling and imaginative moments on If I Let it Quiet—it begins with the warm strum of Pollett’s acoustic guitar, and the quivering, warbled sound of radio static, with both sounds fluttering off of one another until they find a way to coexist, with the static creating this flicking noise that serves as a genuinely interesting percussive element underneath the somber, reverberant guitar chords.
It’s never a collision. If anything, it is an intersection, or a juxtaposition that occurs, between the organic sounds included on the album—primarily Pollett’s acoustic guitar, and the myriad other tones and textures woven into the fabric of every song. And in that intersection, or that juxtaposition, the results are always astonishing to hear—the two are never in conflict with one another, and I suppose what is more impressive than that is how nothing feels forced or shoehorned together. It is natural, and inviting. And it offers an acknowledgment of humanity within something that is often dizzying and brilliant in how it dazzles.
There is a warmth, then, and a surprising intimacy in how Pollet’s voice, and the guitar, sound as “We All Got it Right” collects itself—creating this counterpoint to the rhythm that skitters underneath. A closeness—and in that closeness, there is this effect, making it sound just slightly muffled, or distorted as the song takes on a loose shuffle once Pollett begins singing. “I know that you don’t know me—not really,” they observe. “But we’ve been trading stories through the city for a long time now…for a long time now.”
And there is a hint—the slightest indication, that something is going to happen in “We All Got it Right,” when a second, cleaner sounding track of strummed acoustic guitar arrives as a means of punctuation following the second verse, as well as an atmospheric whooshing sound, and rippling of guitar feedback, both of which craft a sense of tension that is quickly released in the way that they rush towards us, growing louder, and indicating we are on the cusp of something explosive.
And it is a stunning moment—Technicolor and bombastic. Thunderous. It’s surprising and astonishing the heights the song is brought to, albeit briefly, becoming torrential and cacophonic through the pummeling, crunchy hits of the snare drum and the distended, blown-out squalls of electric guitar, with Pollett’s voice pushing through the noise. “If it’s loss down the line,” they proclaim. “Then we’ll keep it in the bar light. Where we all got it right, by the way.”
And there is a breath, or a pause. Intentional. As “We All Got it Right” gathers itself and recenters, finding a space in-between the two extremes it has already, in less than two minutes, explored—the fluttering, flickering elements still present in the background, as Pollett is joined by a steady but still very crunchy rhythm from the drum kit, as the strums of the acoustic guitar mingle with contemplative, complementary electric flourishes, and as it continues, operates from a very distinct kind of give and take, or moments that are meditative or inward, quickly followed by these enormous exhalations of catharsis.
In the press materials or If I Let it Quiet, “We All Got it Right” is described as being about the suggestion of an alternate timeline—one where things, in the end, come together differently, as. Implied by the song’s title, specifically, but also in observations of the final verse. “Was anything mine?” Pollett asks. “It gets messy from a past life—where we all got it right, by the way.”
Within that, the song offers this exploration of loss, and a kind of grasping towards connection. And in that, this need for assurance, and for comfort. “The shape of it is restless and familiar,” Pollett sings once the song has collected itself after the first moment of bombast and ascension. “A quiet, shared language at the center that we both can speak, unfortunately.”
And there are a lot of places throughout If I Let It Quiet where Pollett, in their songwriting, brings us to the end of a song, but in doing so, there are more questions than answers—it is an album that, in what it is working through, and ultimately working towards, is not exactly preoccupied with the idea of resolve. This technique in writing, in songs like “Radio Player,” and here on “We All Got it Right,” takes us to this moment where there is an ask, or a request. An imploring. Not only a want for assurance but the need for it. “Radio Player” fades into the ether with the plea, “I just need you to believe me,” and we are left wondering what, if any, response Pollett receives.
They achieve a similar feeling in the torrential concluding of “We All Got.” “Was yours what was mine?” they ask. “It gets tricky in the bar light, but we all got it right, by the way,” they continue, before reflecting further, as the song turns inward on itself. “Was anything mine?”
*
If I Let It Quiet is not a restless album, or one looking to quickly outgrow itself. Rather, it is an album that, as much as it is able, wishes to marvel at itself. It is an emboldened record—and the boldness, or brightness, can come in the form of these larger, more explosive moments, yes. But there are places, like “Bed of Quiet,” where the boldness, or confidence that Pollett and her collaborators have, takes a different shape—using a sharpness, and vibrancy to tactfully underscore one of the more self-reflective moments on the record.
“Bed of Quiet” begins with a very antiquated-sounding wash of warm synthesizer, with an additional blipping tone, bouncing around within, and a clacking percussive element—both of which imply a build-up, or that something is going to happen as Pollett takes us through the first verse. Though “Bed of Quiet,” then, plays against the kind of ascendant nature one might think it would assume—and as the chorus arrives, it doesn’t turn itself entirely inward, but it begins gliding on an edge of tension. Finding a space that exists between an 80s-inspired pop slink and a more straightforward, guitar-driven sound. And it is surprising—this direction “Bed of Quiet” takes so early on. But it is also indicative of the dynamism and thoughtfulness of Pollett, Watko, and Goldring—a deliberate, deep breath in proving, here, to be just as impactful and compelling as an enormous exhalation.
If I Let It Quiet is not a restless album, but there can be a restlessness or an uncertainty within Pollett’s songwriting, which is where “Bed of Quiet” finds them—restless, and uncertain about themselves, in a way where the frustration, and doubt, become visceral, uncomfortable, and certainly identifiable or understandable.
“This is not my bed of quiet,” Pollett begins. “I don’t see my witness star in the sky. You are not my rooted violet—when the concrete cracks, you stop reaching for the light.”
“This is not my loving hunger,” they observe later, after the song has taken shape with the snarl of the electric guitar, chugging away, and the thudding of the drum kit coursing underneath. “Eating parts of me that I beg to leave behind.”
Pollett’s uncertainty, and perhaps the kind of uncertainty, or doubt we feel within ourselves, is depicted with the most clarity in in the chorus. “Why can’t I get to sleep without spinning it ‘round in my head,” they implore. “All sides of why I took two steps back, before a sprint for the end,” they continue early in the song, before altering the line later on—“Why I went right, then left, when I had sight of the end,” before concluding on an observation that is both humbling, and undeniable to the human condition.
“A little doubt that I let right in—I make a choice, and then I make it again.”
And one of the most impressive things about If I Let It Quiet, and really, one of the most memorable elements to it, as a whole, is its thoughtfulness and its intentions. It is a very deliberate album—deliberate in the sense that from beginning to end, there are these connective threads. Lyrically, or thematically, yes. Pollett uses the album to explore and ruminate on specific things. But sonically, it is assembled in such a meticulous way that the conclusion of one song often leads us right into the next. The distorted, disembodied vocal sample that plays at the end of “Bed of Quiet” warbles itself into the glitchy, skittering sequencing that opens the shuffling, introspective, “Like A River,” where Pollett, in their writing, continues working through the doubt and uncertainty and indecision depicted just one song earlier.
Even in the more somber, or melancholic feeling that “Like A River” begins with, there is something also very playful about how it ripples and bubbles—a place where, again, Watko and Pollett find this space where the convergence of these synthetic textures and the organic tone of the acoustic guitar feels very natural. Across its four minutes, as it pings and bounces off of itself with different percussive effects and jittery synthesizer tones, with Pollett’s guitar woven into these textures, “Like A River” both works from this place of tension that is never allowed to be released—there is no big moment of catharsis or ascension, and the way this pensive, inward feeling is sustained throughout is rather remarkable. And in that, there is a surprising kind of expanse offered.
Musically, it never soars—it doesn’t have to. And there are enough moving parts occurring that I would never say it is minimalistic in how it is arranged, but what it offers is room for Pollett’s self-reflection, without the risk of ever crowding, which makes room, then, for us to give consideration to the lyricism, in the spaces between verses.
“Like A River” doesn’t entirely forego a verse/chorus/verse structure, but it is a lot less rigid than that, and the looser construction allows Pollett’s writing to feel more stream of conscious, or if anything, like a conversation with the self—one that does not end in resolution, or a greater understanding, but of an acknowledgement, however difficult that might be to arrive at.
“When I’m all thought out,” Pollett resigns heavily in the opening line. “When my body is the killer. From my frothing mouth, like pulling cars out of the river.”
“I did not mean to draw blood while I was sleeping,” they continue, after a short instrumental break. “I could be wrong about the push and pull—was it across, and not symmetrical?”
“Like A River,” as is the case elsewhere on If I Let It Quiet, is not exactly looking for resolve in the end—and really, not even an understanding. Because there are of course things about the self, as we continue to put in the work required, or asked, that we might not ever really understand. But the song offers this moment of acknowledgment, or awareness. But what we do with that, then—there is no right or wrong answer.
“I’m having a hard time knowing what’s the current and where I’m slowing,” Pollett observes in the second half of the song. “Feels like running in all directions. Where I’m going—it’s off the map, so it’s hard to know.”
And there is a humbling admission, then, in the final few lines of “Like A River.” Because even the most unflattering or difficult facets of our personalities are still a part of us, whether we want them to be or not. Whether we want to be defined by them, to others. Or perceived. “If I let it quiet, who am I if not my thinking,” Pollett muses wryly, before the reluctant realization comes in the end. “I think that I am gonna be up for a while.”
And given the themes that are found running throughout If I Let It Quiet, or the notions that Pollett ruminates on, it should not be surprising that they continue to explore this facet of themself on the fittingly titled “Second Guesser,” which opens the second half of the record—it is surprising though, and, again, speaks to the dynamism and imagination found across the record, in how the song is approached in terms of arranging. It is somber, or inward-turned, yes, but it is done so in a stunningly theatrical, swooning, and inherently gorgeous way.
And I perhaps overuse the word “meticulous” when writing about music. I have, perhaps, already overused it here, in the consideration I am giving to If I Let It Quiet. In how I listen, though, something that is always a marvel to me is the attention to detail. The small things. The moments in a song where you can hear the thought, and the labor, that went into making them not only sound the way they do, but feel the way they do. Because there is a remarkable precision to how “Second Guesser” sounds. The warmth in the recording. Even in a record that scales to the towering heights the way If I Let It Quiet does, there are these instances that are incredibly human and intimate-sounding. A closeness.
“Second Guesser” opens with the resonant, deep sound of Pollett’s guitar, and their voice—a voice that is both strong in how they project it, and the way notes are carried, but a voice that also understands the delicacy and fragility. The strums of the guitar are not hesitant, exactly, but there is this feeling of trepidation, and sorrow, that comes every time the sound of the strings reverberates—it’s joined then by a flurry of atmospheric sounds, swirling in halfway through the first verse to both accentuate, and offer the slightest contrast in tone.
The theatricality, or the kind of grandeur of the song arrives in the chorus—a quick, and arresting emotional rise and fall that happens when Pollett’s voice soars during a very specific moment, and they work to bring it back down on the next line, there is this punctuative lower note struck on the guitar, and in being underscored by a rumbling synthesizer tone, it is extraordinarily effective in simply knocking the wind out of you. The song then becoming even more dramatic, or heightened, in scope, or in feeling, during the second verse, when a cinematic cello begins weaving its way into the textures already present, and ever rippling.
And we of course want answers, or assurance. A comfort. “Second Guesser” brings us to a moment in time—no answers are given, and it exists as a grasp for something just out of reach. The ghost of something, or someone, you can still feel, or catch the glimpse of out of the corner of your eye, but by the time you turn your head, the feeling is gone. There’s an urgency. A desperation. “How could I know if I should stay or go,” Pollett asks, then after the briefest pause for a wordless exhalation. “How could you be so sure of anything when all I see keeps on rearranging?”
The sense of loss then, and feeling lost within yourself, comes in the chorus—again, altering lines slightly each time it is sung. “The morning feels the same,” Polllett sings, their voice collecting itself so that it can ascend to this dramatic, breathtaking instance. “I’m calling out your name to see who turns around, what might come out when no one’s there to keep me from second-guessing.”
“And the morning turns to day,” Pollett observes near the end of the song. “I’m calling out your name to see who turns around, what thoughts are loud when no one’s there to keep me from second-guessing.”
What thoughts are loud
And I am always coming back to that. The thoughts that are the loudest. The ones that, regardless of how much effort or work we have put into ourselves, are persistent. Because what do you do, then. What do you grasp towards. Or, rather, who—who will offer that assurance. The reminders, however often you need them, that the loudest thoughts are not forever.
The small, good things that we are desperately clinging to when we are able to find them.
Something that even for just a moment—however fleeting, will provide respite. Lower the volume.
The good in anything.
*
And I am always thinking about friendship. The connection that forms, and grows, between two people. The way they encourage one another. The way they can challenge, or push one another. The way you inspire one another. The way you ultimately better yourselves through the connection. The way you, in time, cannot fathom your life without having met them.
And something that I admire, or often marvel at, is a friendship, or a dynamic, where creativity is at the core. Where you both are working towards something, and through that, you have learned more about one another. And in working toward something, the something—whatever it is, in the end, does serve as documentation of your relationship. How you have grown, and become more comfortable with one another, and become confident in the ways you can push, or challenge one another. A documentation of how well you work together.
I think about the band Sister.—and how it began as a “friendship project” between Hannah Pruzinsky and Ceci Sturman, and how their dynamic, in working together so closely and in knowing one another so well, found its way into the songwriting on last year’s Two Birds.
There is a folksy, twangy nature to Pollett’s debut, Strangers, from nearly a decade ago now—the sound, or nature of which you can hear resonating slightly in its follow-up, No Woman is the Sea, arriving four years later. No Woman, though, marks the beginning of Pollett’s work with Jordan Watko as their creative partner, and across that record, you can hear the two of them slowly beginning to find the places where Pollett’s acoustic guitar, and rootsier inclinations, and Watko’s penchant for synthesizers and programing, can fit together—a convergence they have continued to grow much for comfortable and confident in exploring and navigating, and pushing the boundaries of, over the last six years, both with the robust and rippling arranging found In The Garden, By The Weeds, which pushes further away from the previously favorite organic textures in favorite of much more intricate but synthetically created environments, and here, on If I Let It Quiet, which is simply staggering just in terms of how bold and thoughtful it is from beginning to end. You can hear the trust and admiration Pollett and Watko have for one another as artists, and you can hear them challenging one another in the effort to make this record just as gigantic, crisp, and intelligent as it is.
Part of the intelligence, and thoughtfulness, of If I Let It Quiet comes from the way it is, with great intention, structured—of the album’s dozen total tracks, nearly all of them are, from one to the next, connected by a sonic thread. And you can, of course, individually listen to the songs from this album—pulling one or two out, and focusing on those, but the intention is, because of that connection from one to another, often executed in ways that are both subtle and clever, the album is meant to be experienced without interruption. Something you immerse yourself in—and in that immersion, the scope of these songs will simply envelop you.
And I think this requires a lot of foresight, and a meticulous attention to detail—to figure out these ways to allow the songs to run nearly seamlessly throughout an environment that is ever shifting. I asked Pollett about this element of the album—how challenging it might have been to develop, or foster, throughout the creation.
“Jordan and I certainly value and appreciate albums that feel cohesive and intentional,” Pollett explained. “We’ve really enjoyed creating the elements that tie the songs together and build the world of the album. It’s not always easy,” they continued. “And Jordan really shines here as a producer.”
Pollett understands, though, that working toward something larger, or that creates a whole, is “antithetical to the way singles and the algorithm” wants artists to operate, which Pollett said made the cohesion, and the world of an album, even more important.
“It feels like such a sincere way to tell the listener, ‘Hey, this song has a context and if you are not listening in that context, then you might be missing something we made for you.’”
And there is this connectivity, then—thoughtful and intelligent, in Pollett’s songwriting here, as well, with specific themes, or ideas, or expressions, recurring throughout the record.
“In The Garden felt like such a connected piece of work with connected themes and a start-to-finish flow; it felt natural when Jordan and I realized we were writing a new record to try and do something similar,” they explained. “Something intentional so we could keep ourselves within the bounds of certain ideas without straying too far creatively.”
I am always thinking about friendship. The connection that forms and grows between two people and the way they encourage and can challenge one another. The way you inspire one another. Because I am also always thinking about, and marveling at, a friendship where creativity is at the core. Where you are both working towards something larger than yourselves.
Pollett referred to In The Garden, By The Weeds as a “friendship album,” and said the same of If I Let It Quiet. Though this time, there is an inherently more emergent nature to the way friendship is depicted, as Pollett began writing the lyrics while Watko was preparing to relocate from where they had both been living (and at one time were roommates) in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Japan.
“Our working relationship and friendship was changing quickly and drastically,” Pollett recalls. “We talked damn near daily bout how sad I was, and how afraid I was of the change. How worried I felt that we’d never make music together again or that we’d drift apart. How he was worried about a cross-continental move being the right step for his life and relationships.”
Pollett said the album, then, is the pair working through that fear and becoming as comfortable as they were able with the change.
*
The first thing you hear when If I Let It Quiet begins, after a series of clattering noises, is a muffled and manipulated voice saying, “I can hear some birds.” The album’s opening track, “Shed Piano, Birds,” unfolding over roughly two minutes, serves as a prologue of sorts, and is one of two pieces on the album best described as a sound collage—alongside the clattering and rustling noises, there is a synthetic fluttering, and the presence of a cavernous, warbled piano, ringing out, while a slow motion flurry of other, disembodied voices are introduced, layered and overlapped, within the atmosphere created.
It’s glitchy. Jittery. Intentionally overwhelming sonically, and disorienting. But within all of that, as it gathers startling momentum within one specific plinking synthesizer sequence, becomes a kind of curtain that rises, guiding us into the first “proper” song—“Cherry,” which takes shape around that plinking sequence once it finds the right tempo with which to oscillate, through the addition of Pollett’s careful guitar strums and a rhythm seemingly constructed from a chopped up sample of a voice—the juxtaposition of the organic warmth of the guitar strings resonating, and the icy, skittering of the programming coming together in a way that feels effortless—with much of it receding gracefully, leaving the guitar and the low thumping of beat underneath, as Pollett quietly ruminates on the opening lines. “I cut my hair, but I still don’t look like you,” they confess. “I burned the map, now the north is a sound.”
There is a reflection on time, and life—the ways we change, perhaps without realizing it, and the distance that forms, depicted with a great tenderness in “Cherry”—and through vivid, evocative imagery, with Pollett pulling us into a personal narrative where they are revealing, yes, but giving away only as much as they wish to, and allowing an ambiguity to hang over the phrase turns, specifically within the bittersweet chorus.
In how it is arranged, and how it moves with intention, “Cherry” is not working from a place of tension exactly, though there is this impressive amount of restraint used—a loosening occurring as it heads towards the chorus, when the acoustic guitar and muffled, sparse rhythm are supplemented with additional guitar flourishes and percussive elements. But the way it remains in quiet, or more of a meditative space, is fascinating to hear.
There’s a visceral feeling to Pollett’s writing. An edge. Heightened sensations through the descriptions. “The blood’s not blood—it’s the juice from a cherry,” they explain.” And it hurt my mouth, sucking stones; spitting empty,” with that final word repeated, and ascending slightly each time, as a means of bringing us into the stirring chorus—the words falling into a playful, infectious melody that offsets the emotional heft they hold, with Pollett’s words bouncing gently then cradled in the restrained arranging. “We break like belonging,” they sing. “We’re broken like bread. When you look, you don’t see it—don’t know where we’ve been,” Pollett continues, the words tumbling not with urgency but with precision and intent. “From two of us brothers, to both of us dead—laid to rest in the 90s, in the backseat of a van.”
The reflection, then, on time and life—the distance that forms, and what happens within that space, is considered in the second verse. “The time will pass—old punks in comfortable shoes,” Pollett smirks. “But your hate is fit to last—getting sick from the thorns that you chew” they continue, before returning to the imagery from the first verse, and altering the lyric slightly to imply that distance in the reflection on time, and life. “The blood’s not blood—it’s the juice from a cherry. I spit it out—sucking stones, getting wary.”
“Cherry” is a song that is not concerned with the idea of resolution—there is often little, if any, resolve to be found in what is depicted across If I Let It Quiet, which is of course indicative of the human condition. We can only reflect. We can never cure. We continue to put in the effort, or the work, and hope there is growth in time. And in that, “Cherry” is a song that, in a moment of wonder, folds back onto itself, with the hushed reintroduction of the fluttering, jittery sounds it opened with. All of which fade away, then, as we hear a warbled, manipulated recording of Pollett singing the chorus, strumming along with it on their acoustic guitar, which reveals a kind of vulnerability, and offers, that even through the effects applied to the recording, and the synthetic, dazzling textures used throughout the album, it is rooted in something truthful and extraordinarily human.
*
I want to cry in the arms of somebody that knows me
And I am always coming back to that. More and more. Especially within the last year. The idea of perception. The way that I wish to be perceived, and the way that I ultimately am. And the disconnection that, more often than I wish to admit, occurs between the two. I think about all of the ways that I have been misunderstood.
I am always coming back to that. The thing that Josaleigh Pollett confesses early on in “You Know What I Mean,” the first song on In The Garden, By The Weeds. “I want to cry in the arms of somebody that knows me,” they implore, with a kind of resignation. The wish to be understood. The need for assurance and for comfort. The ask for someone to be there. To validate, yes. But more than that, just to listen.
I think about how, in time, the reflections of yourself that you see within something will shift. There is still meaning, yes. Poignancy. Resonance. The meaning, then, moves alongside you. You carry it with you.
I think about friendship. And the connection that forms, or grows, between two people. The way they encourage one another. Challenge or push one another. The way you inspire one another—can better yourselves through the connection. And the way you, in time, cannot fathom your life without them.
Somebody that knows me.
The dazzling, enormous, and emergent third track on If I Let It Quiet, and the first official single following the album’s announcement, “The Witness” is a continuation, of sorts, of this need, or desire, to be understood. To be known. And within that need there is also the acknowledgment of the work, or the effort. The work you put into yourself, and into another. In describing the song on Instagram the day it was released as a single, Pollett said “The Witness” is “a song about knowing that to be seen and held and understood, you must first see and hold and understand. It’s about love,” they continue. “Beyond limits and gender. Across multiple universes. It’s about learning something new about yourself through the eyes of someone else.”
In an album that, from beginning to end, is incredibly bold and fearless in what it depicts, and how it is depicted, “The Witness” is the absolute boldest—undeniably If I Let It Quiet’s finest moment, in the precision and thought it is arranged with, the towering heights it climbs to with an effortless grace, and in the tenderness, and reflective nature of Pollett’s lyricism.
And in thinking about music, and in writing about music, there are these certain feelings that occur within a song. How the song can make us, feel, as listeners. Yes. Of course. But the song itself. There’s something happening within all of the elements as they tumble together. A feeling. A sensation. It’s hard to put into words really, yet I try to. I will listen to a song, and hear a specific moment unfolding, and feel like it's the sound of someone both running away from something while also running towards it at the same time.
I tell you all of that to tell you this. There is this line that exists between melancholy and triumph. Especially in music. In the way a song sounds and what it feels like. Something that is somber, yes, or downcast, but is working towards something larger. A way to push through. Something that is starting or surprising in how beautiful it ends up being. This is how “The Witness” sounds to me. A song with little if any time to spare—opening with the briefest little glitching sound that in a sense offers a warning of what’s to come as the instrumentation converges and slides into a rhythm that courses in an extraordinarily robust, slow-motion grandeur and seething urgency.
And there are songs that work from the “quiet/loud/quiet” structure, w/r/t the way they build, or simmer during the verses, and are allowed to explode or take off within the chorus as a means of punctuation. “The Witness,” in how it sounds, and how it continues unfolding with immediacy, doesn’t entirely forego this construction—it teeters on this enthusiastic or exuberant feeling of tension. Playful and kind of warm, or inviting, as Pollett sways through the verses with big, acoustic guitar strums, but in doing so, there is still this palpable feeling of restraint—you can tell that it is working towards something simply enormous, and when it arrives at that moment, it hits with a weight and a transcendent, ramshackle beauty that does knock the wind out of you.
The arranging, at least in the verses, is tightly wound and precise, which creates this very organic contrast with how conversational, or casual, Pollett is in the observations and reflections explored in the first verse. “Ask a complicated question of the witness—I think that he is here with us,” they begin. “I keep feeling like I’m getting to the party just when everyone is leaving. I don’t need an audience for every feeling,” Pollett continues, with urgency. “But god knows this one, I do. I can see why you are doing what you’re doing—I can see a part of me in you.”
And there are a number of themes, or ideas, that emerged during the writing of If I Let It Quiet. The notion of direction is the one that I noticed immediately. Not the need for direction. No. The acknowledgment that exists and, more than anything, in that acknowledgment, there is a hesitancy or a reluctance. Pollett refers to this as “The map is not the territory.”
“Knowing the map of a place is not the place,” they explained to me. “And you won’t know the place until you go to the place and experience it.”
“I burned the map,” Pollett confesses on the song “Cherry.” “Now the north is a sound.” Or, here, on “The Witness,” “Could it be that we arrive at truer places once we stopped following the map,” they ask. “Couldn’t arrive at myself without you—maybe you could feel like that.”
And I am always thinking about friendship. About the connection that is made between two people and how it grows. How they encourage and inspire one another. How you challenge one another. Push one another. The moments of tension. The moments of resolve and of compassion, or tenderness. The way you have bettered yourselves through one another.
“The Witness,” as it heads towards the chorus, does feel like it is, without a doubt, going to ascend—there is the briefest moment, a kind of inhalation before the crunchy, distended guitars, and the layers of blown out, urgent sounding synthesizers, come falling into place, and Pollett, under neath all the noise, howls with a sense of need, “Tell me I’m right. Tell me you like it. Will you tell me that I’m a good person, and take me out when I fight it?”
As it glides into the second verse, there is another moment—an exhalation, of sorts, and “TheWitness” collects itself, allowing the additional elements in the arranging to recede, leaving Pollett, again, with their acoustic guitar, some slight atmospheric flourishes, and the clattering percussion underneath, as the lyrics are then turned back inward with a stark poignancy and resonance that depicts this horrible disconnected feeling—a distance that forms between yourself, and others, where you wonder if there will ever be a way to bridge that gap. “Sometimes I can go a week without feeling,” they explain. “I come to with a gasp during small talk. It’s not that I’m crying over weather—it’s just that I don’t know where the time goes.”
Pollett continues to ruminate on this visceral need for connection—the different ways we wish to be seen, or understood by another. A closeness, yes. Sure. The desire for that one individual who does understand you the most. But to no longer be misunderstood, or to not feel the distance that has formed between yourself and literally anyone else—co-workers, in-laws, friends. “I think I found what’s at the bottom of the spiral—I think it’s when there’s no witness,” they confess. “No one to see you at the party, with your hair long, spinning in a new dress—and knowing it’s a new dress.”
The torrential, desperate, gorgeous nature of the song returns for the final chorus—the melody remaining the same, but the words are different, as a means of pushing the narrative further until the song’s very final moment.
“I’ll tell you my name when it’s in a new language,” Pollett exclaims, before adding one what is certainly one of the most personal, and haunting lines from the entire album. “Will you tell me I’m your favorite version of me? And then watch while I change it?”
And the thing about If I Let It Quiet is that it is not a hopeless album. Far from it. It is an album that is always outstretching itself and grasping for the good things, however small, or however fleeting. Always looking to find a sense of assurance to offer itself as well as us, as listeners, invested and immersed. There’s no easy resolution throughout the album. Pollett and Watko are not looking for that, I don’t think. Again, another reflection of the human condition. “The Witness” doesn’t find resolve, in the end—but instead, it keeps clawing towards that feeling of assurance, and understanding, and in the final lines, finds something small, yet promising, to cling to in the moment.
“Blink twice for yes—swim out a high tide,” Pollett asks as the song careens towards the ending, when all of the elements find a gradual way to slow themselves down. “All of the people that we told our secrets to—they all cheer from other timelines.”
And sometimes it feels like everything is just slightly out of reach. The thing that we are grasping towards. We all want, or desire, to be understood. To be known. To be seen. For that space to be made. It shouldn’t be as big of an ask as it does end up being. And we cannot, of course, be understood, or seen, or known, by everyone. Not everyone is going to make the space or make as much space. And it is fortunate—truly remarkable, really, when you find someone who does make that space. Who sees you and who continues to understand. Because that’s what makes “The Witness” such a bold and gorgeous statement, and a reflection. The urgency and immediacy literally and figuratively propel itself forward towards something so much larger.
The one good thing. The space made. We grasp towards something and if we’re lucky someone will meet our hand, when it is outstretched, and hold onto it. Someone who challenges and inspires and pushes. You find the connection where you do continually learn something new about yourself through the eyes of someone else.
*
“It’s not a coincidence to me that this new album feels like my best writing,” Pollett tells me. “My most connected to myself, and my most intentional while also being the first album I’ve written completely sober.”
It’s not easy. It is not forever. I am always coming back to that. Over the last two years, specifically, as an attempt to show myself some grace. A reminder that the moment I am in—it isn’t always going to feel this way. Because for a number of years, I had what could best be described as a fraught relationship with alcohol.
It’s not easy. On the telephone, near the end of 2023, it was not easy to hear my best friend’s voice when she said, “Someone with as many mental health issues as you have shouldn’t be drinking at all, let alone as much as you are.”
It is not forever.
You surrender yourself, in a sense. To change. Grow. I’ve come to understand in time that the work we must put into ourselves never really does end. It’s not easy. Humbling, really, to acknowledge my fraught relationship with alcohol.
Josaleigh Pollett and I both gave up alcohol at roughly the same time. It’s not easy. It is not forever. They explained that all of the songs on If I Let It Quiet were written within the last two and a half years. “Sobriety was a thick, sticky, uncertain fog for the first year,” Pollett said, adding that this coincided with Watko’s relocation to Japan, as well as the conclusion of two other important relationships. “I was faced with my own behaviors and my own ways of feeling and navigating change without reaching for a substance for the first time in my life,” they continued. “It was deeply uncomfortable and there was so much to explore.”
The day before New Year’s Eve, 2023. Dry January, it is often called. February. Winter into spring. Autumn becomes winter. One year ends. The next begins. Spring, into summer. Another year. The grace you continue to show yourself, as you are able. The reminder. It is not forever.
I think about how, in time, the reflections of yourself that you see within something will shift. There is still eating, yes. Poignancy and resonance. The meaning moves alongside you, then. You carry it with you.
The moment that you are in. It isn’t going to feel like this forever.
On the phone, my best friend’s voice, weighed down with concern, yes, but also understanding and compassion. This is what it is like to be seen. She tells me, more often than she probably wishes she had to. “This is not forever.”
If I Let It Quiet concludes with “Tacit”—a bright, shimmering collision between the organic, acoustic warmth of Pollett’s acoustic guitar, and Watko’s glitchy, jittery production—a song that, as it unravels, does not exactly explore the notion of tension and release but simply given moments where it can breathe, and expand. This collision of sound also offers a contrast—the skittering, squiggling sequencing is playful, yes, which softens, as it is able, Pollett’s rumination, and self-reflection.
The titular expression from the album is found earlier, in the song “Like A River,” but the idea, or the notion, is one that recurs. “Who am I if I let it quiet,” Pollett told me, when discussing the connective threads through their songwriting. “What is left when I work through the worry? What if the change is exactly what we need? What if holding onto something too tightly is keeping it from growing and change exactly how it needs to?”
“Tacit,” in a kind of tenderness, explores the idea of letting go, and the uncertainty, or trepidation that comes along with that. “Holding it tightly,” Pollett sings while the instrumentation oscillates underneath. “Pain in the press. Kill all of your darlings, darling—break apart a bit.”
Because I think about perception. Often. This year, specifically. How we wish to be perceived, and how we ultimately are. How we are known and how we are misunderstood. What is left when we work through worry. What if we let it quiet. Who are we then, if we grow, or change. If we let go.
“Come down gentle—get lost in the glow,” Pollett beckons in the final verse of “Tacit.” “Map out all the left turns, tacit—still is not the road,” they say, before asking both themselves and us, as listeners, “Rip it up, and go.”
Rip it up, and go.
It is not forever.
If I Let It Go Quiet is out on July 24th via Audio Antihero and Lavender.
