Don’t let the title of this EP fool you. Oklahoma folk songwriter Micah Felts knows how to write a song. In fact, he knows how to write really thoughtful and beautiful songs, as can be heard throughout this latest release. Recorded partly in Nashville with Sam Westhoff (Haffway) and partly in Tulsa with Jesse Perdue, I Don’t Know How to Write a Song has the depth and heart on par with some of the classic names in the genre, and a voice that floats along timelessly.
Throughout the EP, Felts has a way of incorporating little details from life and passing thoughts and giving them a profundity that elevates each song. On the serene opener “Silver Lining,” Felts recalls “There was a hawk out on the freeway. And I was jealous of him,” beginning a story of feeling incomplete and searching for that something to fill what’s missing (“”I feel like thunder without lightning. Like a cloud, no silver lining”). He then ponders mortality on the lovely “River”, where he is joined by Callan Brown, trading lines about the inevitability of death (“”We’re all rivers winding down to the sea”). Yet thanks to his settling voice and the simple yet exquisite acoustic guitar compositions, these tracks are comforting balms instead of morose dirges.
For Felts, love isn’t written in grand gestures and feats. It’s little moments (“”Coffee in your hand, sunlight on your face, you don’t understand the treasured way you make me feel”) that he makes speak volumes. Even when he pines for someone on “Get to You,” his soft-spoken vocals and the harmonizing on the chorus gives the track a mellow, breezy feel that makes the song inviting instead of desperately emo.
The EP is closed out by the brilliant title track. This is one of the songs that has a universality to it, in the way it looks at the world and our human condition, and addresses these issues with a plain-spoken thoughtfulness and a massive amount of heart. Lines like “I don’t know how to help the world, but I know how to feel. And I don’t have an answer for the pain that this life yields. A little bit of tenderness is what it takes to heal” sound so simple but are delivered with such eloquence and grace, it reaches Dylan-status.
If it sounds like I’m gushing – it’s because I am. This is the type of album you can throw on again and again, and catch extra little nuggets you may have missed the first time. Micah Felts KNOWS how to write songs, and they certainly deserve to be heard.
I Don’t Know How to Write a Song is out everywhere this Friday. Listen to the pre-released singles here.
The Indy Review 