Search - Amy Stroup :: Tunnel

Amy Stroup lives in Nashville, but she's part of the Other Nashville, a community that's geographically close, but artistically far away from the country music business. It's a place where songwriters like Stroup are fearlessly demolishing the boundaries between genres, floating freely through the musical universe to create music that blends elements of folk, pop, country and rock into a unique style that encompasses them all, without fitting easily into any existing category. Like her earlier solo albums, Tunnel avoids the easy truths in search of something more substantial. "When you feel something real, you realize there are a lot of aspects of love," Stroup says. "Fairytale love, brotherly love, the love you see in movies, true love, but reality is that commitment and relationships take effort. They refine us and, while sometimes that process is difficult, it brings out the best in us if we endure." ! "Falling," a song about the dying embers of a relationship was written with Mary Hooper. Chiming guitar, spacey organ and skittering percussion that includes djembe, congas and shakers produce a delicious polyrhythmic clatter to compliment Stroup's multi-tracked harmonies and a vocal that's equal parts anguish and resignation. Hooper also contributed to "Far From Yesterday," a simple song of lost love and regret that balances an irregular percussion track that mimics the sound of a breaking heart with Stroup's silky, forlorn vocals. Stroup wrote "Finally Found Our Way" with Pillar Diaz, a singer that grew up in Chile, and producer/songwriter Cason Cooley. It's a cautiously optimistic ballad with Synder providing a faintly funky rhythm loop and the sanctified sound of a church organ on synthesizer to compliment Stroup's delicately jubilant vocal. "It All Comes True" is a mellow, unapologetically happy pop song. It sports one of the album's most catchy melodies and another gently uplifting performance by Stroup. The music on Tunnel is deceptively calm, but Stroup's vocals convey hidden depths of feeling that pull you deeper with every listen. By mixing the acoustic sounds of a singer/songwriter with a subtle, shimmering studio gloss, the record weaves a dream-like spell of rapturous melancholy.