OG Quick Take: Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover - What of Our Nature

Their second collaboration mostly finds the right side of a tricky balance

OG Brad here with my first Quick Take, and I’ll begin by reflecting on a seasoned group of musicians who once noted that there is a fine line between stupid and…

…clever.

For me, that is a feeling that comes up when listening to indie folk artists, especially ones with lyrics that are at once both deft and dense and whose songs seek to dance between sly humor and deep meaning. More often than not, I’ll be honest that it ends up on either the way-too-clever or the not-clever-at-all sides of the spectrum.

One exception has been Haley Heyndrickx, ever since I stumbled upon one of her early singles (from 2018), “Oom Sha La La,” which has some of the, yes, cleverest lyrics in a single track I can recall, interweaving signposts of daily life with the vagaries of relationships with overarching existential questions. All through a super catchy melody and arrangement and a vocal style that is endearing without being too cloying.

Her releases since, including a lovely 2024 album, have kept my interest, even if not totally drawing me in, especially as some of the vocal delivery and arrangements got big enough that I felt like the brilliance and simplicity of her wit and catchiness felt a bit lost.

Now she and past collaborator Max Garcia Conover are back with a new record out today on the venerable Fat Possum, known historically for heavier sounding blues records but now including everyone from Courtney Marie Andrews to Armand Hammer to Youth Lagoon.

They make an intriguing duo on paper, Heynderickx being from Portland, OR, and of Filipino descent, with Conover from Portland, ME and with Puerto Rican heritage. I didn’t know Conover’s solo work, but seeing a past single called “world war 3 is gonna be so dumb” got me worried about where on the clever—>stupid meter this might fall. Throw in the concept for their new record being a trade-off of songs inspired by Woody Guthrie and exploring what it means to be American today in an age of neocolonialism, and I got even more worried.

But I’m pleased to say that this record works for me and fits in with my theme for most of the year, i.e. the need to sink into quieter records. On one of the first singles, “Fluorescent Light,” Haley leads and has moments where she sounds as if she’s aiming for Joni Mitchell territory (not necessarily a good thing in my personal book), but the balance with Conover’s voice and the return to simplicity of the arrangement keeps me from wincing. The lyrics are indeed clearly searching for a modern version of Woody (“They caught us in the bleakness/They caught us on our screens /Brilliant minds go to college/Just to study marketing”) and (“There was an ancient light/there was an ancient song/Now something isn’t right/It’s the time of fluorescent light”), but the deftness of the delivery and the integration of their voices brings it together in a way that makes it click. And on top of everything else, the video is a joy that inspires you want to seek human connection.

On “Boars,” Conover takes the lead and channels another guy who spent a lot of his career chasing Woody and gets a little too into it by trying to pack in way too many words than the melody can handle (“Ring it out slow ring it high make it glow like the crickets in the telephone haze/ Stag shape runaway busted bumper palisade synchronized sinusoidal waves/I spent a little time in the castle/But I never had that dream/I was always hipping through the catgrass living like the only little slugger who can sing”) — but the texture Haley brings vocally is the perfect balance, and the sum ends up more than the parts.

As the year ends, and we need new ways to process an ever-more challenging country and world, this album channeling a prophet of the past who navigated us through another difficult time provides a lovely and quiet salve. Even if at times it’s a bit too, well, clever, it never hits the other side of that tricky spectrum. (Brad)