ISAAC PIERCE /TEN-SPEED MUSIC
Isaac Pierce/Ten-Speed Music is available on Bandcamp, Apple Music, SoundCloud
by Walter Price
If you’re a devotee of singer-songwriter fare in the vein of Adam Green, J. Tillman, Zach Condon, or any version thereof and a bit of the ole internet sleuthing—then you may have already crossed paths with the musician’s musician Issac Pierce or maybe even more familiar with his 2012 EP Ten-Speed Music.
Sleuthing you ask. A quick story. A couple of weeks ago I was trying to relocate a song by a duo I’d heard someplace called Tenspeed. For the love of Gawd, I couldn’t find it again, not the song I was searching for, anyhow. But time and again the before-mentioned EP Ten-Speed Music kept popping up—so, of course, I listened, and almost immediately I fell deeply into its seductive stripped-down cerebral folk magic.
But again, you’re a singer-songwriter aficionado so you probably already know about this new-to-me stunner. As the snow vigorously falls outside my window here in Deutschland, let me try and introduce you to a song under Issac Pierce’s name called “Snow-Plow Song”. A track that’s driven by Pierce’s soothing until they’re haunting vocals as he delivers his picturesque verses.
This one doesn’t need too much self-interpretation, I mean, go on, think away. But there is quite the accompanying backstory for the track posted on the single’s Bandcamp page. “This song contrasts 2 metaphors: Driving a seemingly invincible/magical snow-plow into white-out oblivion besides an estranged/deceased someone vs. shoveling on graveyard crew, location/end-time unknown, thru a blizzard that renders one’s work futile beside that same estranged/deceased someone…”
Dark. Beautiful. Indelible.
Come for the metaphors, stay for the unforgettable production/slow burn arrangement…stream “Snow-Plow Song”, here at the GTC. (Oh, if you can find that duo called Tenspeed anyplace, drop me a line.)
Snow-Plow Song
Artist photo via Bandcamp
Additional lyric support from Luna Pierce
rec/mix/master: True Dream Audio
performed by Isaac Pierce in the Ten-Speed Music style
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Snow plow-ride along in the color of the sun. Nothing’s finished and nothings undone with you. Take turns. Drop the blade, watch drifts curl unheard. Amber-flashing fly into the blur with you.
Dropped us off, after 2. overnight on a shoveling crew. Where we are or when we’re thru, I wonder. Maybe we thought, we’d get somewhere, when the local rolls at 17 years. Now I’m watching your footprints disappear in front of me. After dawn if the truck arrives, we’ll all climb in-warm inside. Thru the weeks after that you died, I learned to drive…