{"id":865997,"date":"2026-08-21T08:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865997\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T08:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:42:11","slug":"squirrel-flower-say-a-prayer-to-the-gods-of-getting-going-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865997\/","title":{"rendered":"Squirrel Flower: Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ella Williams, who performs under the name Squirrel Flower<\/a>, began her debut album<\/a> with a surrender to one of the great American highways<\/a>; ever since she\u2019s been penning road songs that unfold with the precision of a AAA TourBook. She\u2019s spent time in the Boston DIY circuit and on the flatlands of Iowa, and these days, she calls Chicago home when she\u2019s not touring\u2014which isn\u2019t very often. Her fourth album, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going, is another stop on her rock \u2019n\u2019 roll roadtrip. Armed with her authoritative alto and keen eye for emotional realism, she navigates the push and pull between settling down and trucking toward what lies just beyond the horizon.<\/p>\n

Say a Prayer maintains the tender-tough heartland rock of Williams\u2019 2023 release Tomorrow\u2019s Fire<\/a>, and scenery from that record lingers in the periphery: the \u201calleyways of last year\u201d that bore witness to a crash-and-burn romance<\/a> are setpieces in the Orphean tragedy \u201cHelicopters\u201d; the canyons<\/a> through which Williams\u2019 voice echoed emerge in snapshots from cross-country drives on \u201cHighway Woman.\u201d On Tomorrow\u2019s Fire, Williams sang of plants tossing their seeds onto the ground before dying;<\/a> now, she wonders, \u201cIn five years, what will be growing?\/Can I water the concrete?\u201d<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Like that last record, Say a Prayer, opens with a malaise-ridden lament that wades through a soup of reverb. Both records are Alex Farrar productions, and both bear his hallmarks: hissy room tone, distortion that makes springy melodies bounce off themselves, electric guitars that cut through the mix like hot knives or rusty chainsaws, loud-quiet contrasts between understated verses and the spark-throwing choruses they build toward. \u201cFoot Thick Ice,\u201d with its fake-out intro and single syllables dragged through sludge at the earsplitting hook, could pass as a B-side from another Farrar production, Wednesday<\/a>\u2019s Twin Plagues<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Farrar\u2019s production also highlights Williams\u2019 greatest asset: her stunning voice, centering its elasticity and expressiveness while being unafraid to let it get a little dirty. The scuzziness of \u201cSick Tooth,\u201d which borders on pop-punk, makes clarion cuts like \u201cNot Me\u201d and \u201cSurfing USA\u201d sound even more serene in contrast. The latter trades the Beach Boys\u2019 Golden Coast for the Great Lakes, where Williams\u2019 mythic quest to outrun heartbreak\u2014only to break her own heart along the way\u2014finds her in Indiana with \u201cfish in the stars\/Birds on the tide.\u201d The ballad returns to Say a Prayer\u2019s central question, perhaps the one Williams has been asking with every entry in her catalog: Which ailments of the heart can\u2019t the open road heal?<\/p>\n

The specter of domestic stability remains a comforting temptation and a stifling force in Williams\u2019 songwriting. Loneliness begets freedom and vice versa. \u201cShe\u2019ll never be yours and yours alone,\u201d she warns of the titular \u201cHighway Woman.\u201d Williams\u2019 vocals melt like candlewax down the center of the mix and over some delicate acoustic guitar in Ladies of the Canyon<\/a> fashion\u2014fitting for a song about an adventurer who is, like her predecessor, \u201cso busy being free.<\/a>\u201d The tracks that sit on either side of \u201cHighway Woman\u201d challenge its commitment to untetheredness. On \u201cHelicopters,\u201d Williams confesses, \u201cWhen I\u2019m not with you, I just pass the time\u201d; when things take a twangier turn on \u201cReelin,\u201d she vows to be married by 30 with a garden and a good credit score, at least until \u201cbad things call me back again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ella Williams, who performs under the name Squirrel Flower, began her debut album with a surrender to one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-865997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}