PHOTO: FAIRLIGHT HUBBARD
Singer/songwriter Natalie Schlabs has announced her forthcoming album Don’t Look Too Close, due out October 16th, with the release of lead single “Home Is You.” The song was co-written with Bekah Ham and features backing vocals from Katie Herzig. “Romantic, timeless love songs are great, but what about other kinds of love? Best friends, childhood neighbors, brothers and sisters, a mentor and mentee, family. This is just the kind of angle singer-songwriter Natalie Schlabs poses in many of her songs, including her latest, “Home Is You,” said American Songwriter in its premiere of the track, inspired by that person who is your “person.” “Schlabs’ voice possesses an audible kindness to it, that allows her to carry her performance with the calmness and sincerity necessary to portray a song crafted on the kind of love that overreaches any one type of relationship.” “Home Is You”
LISTEN: “HOME IS YOU”
The nine tracks that comprise Don’t Look Too Close, the second full-length effort from the Texas-bred Nashville-based artist, live in the tension between the beauty and heartbreak surrounding our closest relationships. The songs were written when Schlabs was pregnant with her first child, which caused a lot of reflection on her own upbringing and how she wanted to raise him. The album’s title came from the idea that "he’s going to see all the worst of me, be hurt by the worst of me, as much as I don’t want him to, and, as much as I want to be the best for him. I was thinking about how to raise a child, how to pass down values. There’s a dismantling of what I thought I knew,” she explains. “What do I value in my life and where did those things come from? What do I want to share with my children and what do I want to spare them from?”
The tracks on Don’t Look Too Close traverse the spectrum of feelings that tend to coincide with love, from bittersweet consideration of “the wilderness caused by depression or illness” in “See What I See,” to the haunting gentleness of “Ophelia,” written for a friend who lost her daughter. The title track addresses the everyday aches and pains people tend to hide from loved ones, and reflects on love’s blindness, how “sometimes the ones you love will never know how much you love them.” The album as a whole represents a place, a time, and a pocket of feelings that are as distinctly human as they are beautiful. “Growing up surrounded by family in the flatlands, there’s not a whole lot going on outside of the people. The climate is extreme, and isolation binds you to the people around you. Everyone’s in each other’s business, and you learn that love can go in many directions. Sometimes it’s about solidarity and sacrifice, sometimes it’s obsessive or painful,” Schlabs says. “This record is about navigating those feelings within our closest relationships.”
Don’t Look Too Close steps into indie territory with a compelling mix of instrumentation laced with solo vocals that bloom into easy, delicate harmonies. Co-produced by Juan Solorzano and Zachary Dyke, with Caleb Hickman on saxophone and Joshua Rogers on bass, the album swells and ebbs with elegant, absorbing shapes. The songs are moody, candid, and tender, each featuring Schlabs’ characteristically sleek vocals front-and-center, backed by charming instrumental moments that add form and depth to the melodies.
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