Review Under Two: Van Plating's The Way Down

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 98 with singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino focuses on Van Plating’s record The Way Down.

Van Plating’s forthcoming record The Way Down is a top self bourbon served neat on the back deck at twilight. Its complexities are immediately apparent but still best enjoyed with slow, rapt attention and an awareness of their context.

Plating spent her 20s playing and singing in indie rock bands. When her band Pemberley broke up she decided to take some time off from touring and making records. Then life happened and a little time off turned into years.

Once the need to create, the pang that pushes one to make beautiful things, enters the system it never leaves. Like a blood flute quietly doing its work, the need to make art will rear its head even decades after the bug first arrives. 

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Plating’s 2019 self-titled record was the first manifestation of the creative bug pushing itself from the cocoon. The Way Down (set for release on 11/19/21) is where the butterfly takes flight. A decade of reflection and growth baked into a collection of songs that celebrates the person Plating has become and is becoming. 

So often we think of creative change in terms of rebound or redemption. An artist who overcame addiction or was left for dead by the industry. In the case of Van Plating’s The Way Down, the change is not a return from oblivion. It is a leap back into a life that was always there percolating just below the surface of a “normal” existence.

The spiritual centerpoint of the record is the final track “Oxygen.” It is a song about the loss and recovery of love. Its imagery is stark and powerful, with the ocean setting the stage for an examination of what it means to lose something essential and recover it through perseverance. 

“Whose side are you on? My wings are made to soar.”

“Oxygen” is the second song on the record to mention wings- the appearance of which nods both to Van Plating’s complicated relationship with the church and her determination to rise above the noise. Who should make art? How and when should it be made? Throughout The Way Down Plating decides the answers to those questions on her terms. 

“Oxygen” is a fitting closer to the record. With little more than three chords and an acoustic guitar, Plating makes apparent that while she may have had a hard time breathing at points in her life, on this record the creative airways are clear.

Review Under Two: Bendigo Fletcher's Fits of Laughter

Louisville, KY, is the Istanbul of The South. A town at the crossroads of East and (Mid)West. A place suited to spawn My Morning Jacket, Muhammad Ali, Hot Browns, and Louisville Sluggers. A city proud of its heroes and icons. 

Louisville is a Southern town and a Midwestern town. It is country and cosmopolitan. Edgy with an insistence on being refined. Above all, Louisville is one of the jewels of Kentucky- a state whose pride in its creative contributions to American culture could never be over-inflated.

While those icons endure, a new generation carries on the legacy while forging their own trace. In furtherance of that lofty tradition stands Bendigo Fletcher. A band whose music is the feeling of first acceptance after a tough breakup, of the promise that a jarring and unexpected decision brings. Bendigo Fletcher’s Fits of Laughter is an album drunk with familiar sounds melding in the mind to create the buzz of a Sunny Sunday afternoon in the fall. 

As they take the stage at Americanafest’s 2021 Commonwealth of Kentucky showcase a group of twenty-somethings makes their way to the front of the crowd. For the next all-too-short thirty minutes they are all of us who have fallen for this band. Ryan Anderson’s lyrics spanning from party anthem worthy to ruminations on existence and communing with nature. The sounds from Bendigo Fletcher’s tight group of players running through myriad soundscapes to create a sound that is both mature and fresh. 

Ken Coomer, who played drums with Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco, produced Fits of Laughter. His influence on the record is clear. Anderson described their partnership as natural. They began working together by talking about music they loved. To hear him talk about the process sounds like a joy. Joy is the emotion Bendigo Fletcher’s Fits of Laughter evokes. 

From the twenty-something folks dancing and singing every lyric right up front to the music journalist twice their age sporting a grin wide as the Cumberland Gap, Bendigo Fletcher’s record Fits of Laughter and their performance at Americanafest 2021 ignites joy in all who listen.