Footings

Footings is one of those bands that feels like a secret handshake. If you’ve got Footings records on the shelf, you’re digging into the kind of musicians musician steads that scratch way below the surface. The band has operated as the backing band for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, amassed a singular catalog, and held down the hinges of New Hampshire’s indie scene, with songwriter Eric Gagne booking the long-revered Nova Arts fest Thing in the Spring for almost thirty years. The band’s fifth album stands as a testament to the kind of deep roots in folk and Americana that have been a part of Footings from the start. The album is an incubator of rebirth, an emergence from the stagnation and uncertainty that crept in and sat on the chest of a great many for the last half decade.

The Worm Moon, like its namesake, is about shaking off the sediment and growing, no matter how slowly, into something new. The record runs down its grievances through the first ten tracks, hinged on Gagne’s biting lyricism and the particularly deep furrows of Elisabeth Fuchsia’s viola. The record reaches a boil by the time it closes out with “I Won’t Go,” recorded as an independent session from the rest of the material with Charlie Chronopoulos at the Glass Factory in Wilton, NH. The song is a culmination of the tensions and frustrations littered over the rest of The Worm Moon, exploding into a cathartic burn that fuses squalls with the sentimental, ending the album on a defiant, yet confident note. It’s a mantra for The Worm Moon and a cleansing close to the album. The band’s constantly bubbling below the radar, so don’t miss, this is one of their best yet.

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