It’s been just over a year since Milwaukee alt-country outfit Ladybird released its wonderful self-titled EP. The follow-up to the band’s 2021 debut, the record was filled with breezy love songs set on train lounge cars; rip-roaring tributes to honky tonk women and redneck raceways; and cover art of bassist Josh Rardin, as a young boy, posing with racing legend Dick Trickle. What more do you want?
Well, how about a new album? Ladybird’s first proper LP, Amy Come On Home, is set for release on May 17. Ahead of that date, the band has shared the record’s first single, “Audrey’s Garden.” Sonically, it’s a gorgeous and sepia-toned toe-tapper; lyrically, it’s a wistful and bittersweet meditation on the good ol’ inexorable march of time. Listen to the song below, and then read some notes from singer-songwriter Pete Freeman below that:
My neighbors growing up were Audrey and Ken. They were the sweetest, smoothest mfers on the block. Audrey always kept an immaculate garden in her backyard.
Whenever I’d come home for holidays or funerals or both, I’d hear and see about the changes to the place and people that raised me. I watched as the “cow town,” as I heard it referred to, started to slowly change into a DC suburb.
While the physical and geographic elements of change are hard to swallow, this song deals more with the human element of change. Coming home and seeing time take its toll on the people I had come up around, as it does to us all.
Audrey passed away last year. She was a piece of this elaborate web of people that nurtured, protected, and sometimes made fun of me so that I could become who I am today (whatever tf that is). I’m grateful to her and to everyone for it. Thank you.
Oof, we feel that. Look for Amy Come On Home May 17. We’re hoping/assuming another track from the album, “Short King Shuffle,” will be a little less heartbreaking.
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