Review: Lauren Pratt plants & nurtures a stalwart ‘Young American Sycamore’ on new album

Reality can crumble in vast puffs of smoke, self-aggravated deterioration and unexpected traumas. When we emerge, having endured the kind of filthy misery we all inevitably suffer, what we do next defines who we are. Coated in soot, folksy free-spirit Lauren Pratt peers through the charcoal-laced glow of the past few years of her life on her new record. Young American Sycamore, produced by Don Bates, bleeds from within, and its embers burn a soft scarlet, a tinge of that unforgettable pain still coursing in her veins. But such emotional throbs burst into dangerous flames and serve her well in warding off further damage. “God bless the roof that caved / With hydrant water and flames / In my grieving loss draw near to me,” she sings on “Give and Take,” in which she sifts through broken bones and twisted shards in the now dying campfire.

When her apartment building went up in flames, Pratt was so terribly rattled that she cowered from the whole world and “decided to close in on myself,” she says. The devastation ever an imprint on her mind, music fled from her, and for more than a year, she did not write or sing a single song. Her roots all but extinguished, and deflated of all creativity, she chose to pursue a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, yet she wasn’t totally satisfied. The music would later strike as a relentless python, and so the new record, doused with Biblical imagery, a foundation on which she could then understand her world, crackles with heartsick, fervent colors. “I need to find out what my spirit is wanting / These echoing rooms are just empty tombs / In a house that I’m haunting,” she whimpers on “Haunting,” gliding through vestiges of Patsy Cline’s most well-known works (“Crazy,” “She’s Got You”). Pratt’s now-faded tears work as watercolors splashed across time and space, and her syrup-thick voice is one of great baptismal yearning.

Pratt could very well have let her wounds drain her dry, but she unlocks unimaginable glory in the craft. “In the Valley” kicks off her pilgrimage with a deceptively chipper production (“I’ve got the pieces with no way to mend,” she confides), and the golden countryside springs from her feet and lurches over the horizon, perhaps plummeting to dark psychological depths. Across the remaining nine songs ⏤ from the rambling “Mercy” (a condensed compilation of such Biblical tales as Moses & the Red Sea and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus Christ) to the piano-built “The Spirit Moves,” a desperate search for redemption (“The spirit used to sing like a bird loosed from its cage / And hide me ‘neath its wing in the heat of the day”) ⏤ the budding vocalist exhibits the kind of astonishing feats that’ll knock you off your feet. Her mediations, perhaps best displayed on “Twenty-Five,” a devilishly bluesy murder song, which also manages to examine one’s navigation through early adulthood, provoke the listener to soak into their own, too.

A smokey alto burrows feverishly into layers of country music tradition, mining folk music and honky-tonk in the process. Young American Sycamore, a reference to sycamore imagery in the Bible (trees often resemble elements of judgement), is a patchwork of harrowing internal scrutiny. It’s not that the world has given up on her; it’s that she nearly cast her own soul into the fire. “I need something there to hold me close / That feels like the Holy Ghost,” she sings on “Cocaine Gospel.” Her emotional crisis is best served as iron melded for war, leaving no room for relief, and Pratt’s fable-leaning approach enriches the breadth of personal evolution. She’s never once stagnant, and in fact, her religious framework is quite riveting. There’s a misery with which she must contend, and it all comes to a boiling head on the closer called “Doubt,” a howling, monumental a cappella performance ⏤ “My wavering faith, I must iron it out / Smooth away the wrinkle of doubt,” she hums into resounding silence. Her story is not yet over, but she most certainly knows what she must do next.

Young American Sycamore is out everywhere now.

Photo Credit: Shelby Nicole Goldsmith

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