{"id":818809,"date":"2026-08-19T13:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T13:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/818809\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T13:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T13:46:14","slug":"squirrel-flowers-new-album-finds-its-heart-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/818809\/","title":{"rendered":"Squirrel Flower\u2019s new album finds its heart in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Squirrel Flower\u2019s latest album, \u201cSay a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going,\u201d reads like a travelogue of vast American highways and fleeting encounters. Written during a relentless tour schedule between 2024 and 2025, these nomadic tracks by Chicago singer-songwriter Ella O\u2019Connor Williams were born on the road \u2014 yet their sonic heart remains very much local.<\/p>\n

Trading the heavy distortion of 2023\u2019s \u201cTomorrow\u2019s Fire\u201d for an ethereal folk warmth, Williams tracked much of the new material live alongside a tight-knit collective of Chicago music mainstays, a group that includes Clay Frankel (Twin Peaks), Dimitri Giannopoulos (Horse Jumper of Love) and Sofia Jensen<\/a> (Free Range).<\/p>\n

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Williams captured half of the album\u2019s tracks live at Merry Meadow, a makeshift studio in Door County, Wis., alongside co-producers Seth Engel and Jack Henry. This community spirit gave her the freedom to shift styles and find a raw, newfound trust in her own voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never recorded with people that lived here before,\u201d Williams, 30, admitted. \u201cIn all of my journeying, I was, like, \u2018I should try making music with people who are right in front of me instead of going somewhere else.\u2019 It was about accepting the fact that I was still living in Chicago, even though I was traveling all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collaborative spark grew from a cold winter songwriting retreat in Green Lake, Wis., which inspired her to break away from her traditional solo process. In May 2025, she set up a mobile recording rig in Door County to track songs for two weeks.<\/p>\n

While the album features rock, country, and experimental moments, Williams said that producer Alex Farrar \u2014 known for his work with Wednesday and MJ Lenderman and whom she recorded with for the rest of the album \u2014 persuaded her to lean into the quieter, more spacious folk tracks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot of skill and restraint to make a record like that,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt is a challenging thing to lean into the silences and take things away instead of just laying every idea out there. Through doing that, he was encouraging me to lean into what makes my sound unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

That minimalist approach anchors the album\u2019s closing song, \u201cWeightless, Untethered.\u201d After hearing Williams perform it, Farrar told her, \u201cThat\u2019s the most Squirrel Flower thing I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d Williams said the track\u2019s rhythmic ebbs and flows set the tone for the entire record.<\/p>\n

Williams, who grew up in Arlington, Mass. and attended Grinnell College in Iowa, has gravitated toward folk music since her early teens due to its extreme vulnerability, she said. Though her interests later shifted toward noise music, she returned to the genre\u2019s raw and emotional risk-taking. Capturing that feeling live required letting go of perfection. During the Wisconsin sessions, she bypassed her strict one-hour vocal warmups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would start recording at 10 in the morning,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI would drink two cups of coffee, smoke two cigarettes, and immediately record. Doing that helped me to just really not care as much and not exercise control over my voice, which allowed it to come out in a grander way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Ella<\/p>\n

Williams has gravitated toward folk music since her early teens due to its extreme vulnerability, she said.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Life on the road directly shaped the record\u2019s travel blueprint, heavily influenced by albums such as Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cBlood on the Tracks.\u201d Her song \u201cReelin\u2019 \u201d uses an overdue Kansas Turnpike toll bill \u2014 sent to her parents\u2019 house because she lacked a permanent address \u2014 as a metaphor for her nomadic existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that in the mail and was like, \u2018Oh my God, this is so indicative of the state of my life right now, which is completely untethered,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why you have to write down everything you think of. Even a 10-second song idea can blossom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s title struck her in a similar fashion while leaving a friend\u2019s off-grid cabin in Vermont after a period of intense isolation. \u201cWhen I was leaving, I was like, \u2018Wow, I should say a prayer to the gods of getting going. I\u2019m leaving this period of isolation and going into the social world again,\u2019 \u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Ella<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a beautiful thing to maintain conversations with your past artistic selves and have that inform where you\u2019re going,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Having celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Squirrel Flower project last year, Williams finds herself looking backward to move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always thinking back to myself from 10 years ago when I first started the project and gaining inspiration,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a beautiful thing to maintain conversations with your past artistic selves and have that inform where you\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams will wrap up her national fall tour back where it all crystallized with a final show on Nov. 20 at Thalia Hall. Headlining that venue is a longtime dream for her, she said, and it\u2019s the perfect homecoming for an album built on the power of community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Squirrel Flower\u2019s latest album, \u201cSay a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going,\u201d reads like a travelogue of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-818809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}