Cassie Noble - ‘Nowhere to Go but Everywhere’
Photo by Ted Gerry
Ontario-based folk-pop artist Cassie Noble has just released an LP titled Nowhere to Go but Everywhere, a dynamic collection of eleven, passionate tunes that are bound to resonate with fans of emotionally honest music.
The album opens with “Jennings Creek,” immediately filling your ears with Noble’s soft and luscious voice, strewn across a sparse arrangement. Some deep bass resonates throughout the production while a lone acoustic guitar is delicately finger-plucked. Straight out of the gate, careful listeners will hear the care that went into the process– if it is not a big studio project, it was definitely engineered by capable hands. The lyrics are quite powerful, and though they are bound to mean something different for everyone, the hook reaches deeply within us: “If I fill myself with chemicals, will I forget the things I miss?” Everyone, at one point or another, has likely considered the idea of self-medicating in order to work through the grieving process, and after the pandemic left several funerals for us to attend, we’ve come back to “Jennings Creek” for multiple listens. The vocal harmonies on the refrain will likely make you feel everything, all at once, and the nice, wide, distorted guitar that appears here will drive the proverbial spike a bit deeper into your emotions. This song is a powerful beginning to the record and a good choice in terms of winning over the listener.
We move next to “The One Who Lived,” a song whose lyrics we will not dare dilute with personal experience or accolades, as they appear to come from a very despairing place. This track is built upon dark and droning piano chords that create a refined juxtaposition with Noble’s lucid vocal performance. Some synthy strings glide into the arrangement, providing a great deal of depth to the song’s atmosphere, and as Noble eases up into her falsetto, layers of harmonies force us to draw comparisons to the work of Maggie Rogers and Julien Baker, two of our favorites. Very little percussion is utilized here, but the occasional sounds of cymbals lend a rejuvenating effect, the way that the tide can roll in to gently and apologetically caress the shore. Although “The One Who Lived is much more sparsely recorded than the pervious track, we favor its cinematic and ethereal vibe.
“Convince Me” is another fantastic tune, and it too begins with the soft chords from a keyboard, but nowhere near as harrowing as the former (though that is not to say it won’t completely rip out your heart). From what we can surmise, this one is about grieving the end of a relationship, which can be just a crippling as anything else. Noble’s tender vocal paints the vivid image of saying goodbye to someone, then having to live with the emptiness. Elements are added to the production along its course, such as the ghostly notes from a reverberating electric guitar, as well as the recurring motif of the string arrangement and backing vocals that intermittently rise to the surface. The highlight here is the magnificent and gradual crescendo that occurs over the span of the song, which brings a sense of hope and possible healing to the parties involved.
Upon spending a great deal of time with Noble’s Nowhere to Go but Everywhere, it’s obvious that a recurring theme is loss, which happens to be right within our wheelhouse and we feel very lucky to have found it, as though it is some sort of lighthouse that keeps our spirit from smashing against the rocks of life. The music here will, without a doubt, send you into a bout of deep introspection, but rest assured that you will emerge on the other side with a fresh perspective and strength to get you through the darker times, especially when silence is not a viable solution.
-HD