Charlotte Morris takes to higher ground in “both sides,” her most engaging, vulnerable body of work yet. With a nod to Joni Mitchell’s eternal classic song “Both Sides Now,” Morris makes an album that embraces dichotomy with open arms and an open heart.
Now, “both sides” is a 13-track, 52-minute odyssey into the messy, beautiful contradictions that make us human, joy and grief, beginnings and endings, hope and heartbreak. Each one feels like a page torn from a journal you’re not sure you were ever meant to crack open, raw, honest, and familiar.
From the raw intimacy of “living & loving” and pensive nostalgia of “maine,” to the stunning lyrical detail of “neighborhood bar” and come-what-may headlights looking back empowerment of “stronger than before,” Morris once again proves she’s both a truth seeker and storyteller, challenging us to seek the same in life, love and the expectations we put on each. Even her voice, full-bodied, clear, and emotionally tinted, is tasked to carry each line with purpose and grace.
The star-making track “back to you” is a slow-burning stunner that pulses with a yearning for something far away but won’t lose sight of hope. As potent but opposite in tempe ram ent, “come tomorrow” glides with plush melodic ease but lands with a wallop of existential reflection, revealing Morris’s knack for writing songs that are simultaneously personal and universal in their themes.
She rounds out the album with her moving rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” and it all comes full circle. In “both sides,” Charlotte Morris delivers music, meaning, or at least a sonic mirror for her listeners who may want to reflect, feel, and heal. It is, yes, a moody and introspective album, but not one that pretends to have it all figured out, which is what makes it so deeply resonant.
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