Okay besties, let’s discuss a tune that hit me like a classic Polaroid dipped in honey and left me truly crying on my fireplace escape final evening. Sheri Miller’s new acoustic launch, “Chelsea Summer season Nights (Acoustic),” is giving all of the retro-romantic, slow-summer-sad-girl vitality — however like, in a spiritually therapeutic means? I’m obsessed.
Should you don’t know Sheri Miller but (you’ll), she’s this dreamy NYC singer-songwriter who’s labored with literal music royalty — Steve Cropper, Paul Shaffer, you identify it — and he or she simply dropped this tremendous stripped model of a tune she initially wrote years in the past in her condominium. Simply her voice, her guitar, and the form of lyrics that really feel like they’ve been handwritten within the margins of a love letter.
From the very first line — “I’ll meet you down in New York Metropolis / By the ghosts of the Chelsea Resort” — you’re transported. Not simply to New York, however to this complete cinematic, candlelit world the place artwork and love and longing are tangled collectively like fairy lights. It’s giving Leonard Cohen meets Phoebe Bridgers in a time machine.
“Time marches on / However you’re my reality / Chelsea Summer season Nights / I’m not afraid to die,” she croons within the refrain. BABE. That’s not simply poetic, that’s tattoo-worthy. There’s one thing so everlasting in the best way she sings it — like this individual, this reminiscence, this second is frozen in amber. And it makes you keep in mind all of your almost-loves, your what-could-have-beens, your summer-night errors you’d make yet again.
I really like how uncooked the manufacturing is. It’s not overproduced or attempting to be fashionable — it’s trustworthy. You may hear her fingers on the strings. Her voice isn’t filtered, it’s felt. And the background vocals? Refined however attractive, like little angel wings holding up the melody.
What makes Sheri stand out, although, is that she’s clearly writing from the soul. Her music bio is stuffed with spectacular stuff (she’s been featured on PBS, carried out earlier than Woman Gaga and Norah Jones, and her final EP acquired over 1,000,000 streams), however this observe feels prefer it was made only for you. No gatekeeping, no ego — only a lady with a guitar and a complete galaxy of emotions.
Should you’ve ever walked by way of the West Village pretending you’re in a film, or appeared out a wet cab window eager about the one which acquired away, this tune is gonna hit so exhausting. It’s gentle, it’s nostalgic, it’s courageous. Like Sheri herself mentioned, “the extra pleasure, the extra we’re free.” Truthfully? She’s proper.
Put this one in your “late evening driving/crying/glamour melancholy” playlist instantly. Thank me later.
Mindy McCall
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