Laura Rabell - Immortal (2020)

Immortal is a satisfyingly shadowy alt-country affair, awash in minor keys, ringing spaghetti Western riffs and a healthy dose of existential dread—a sound the Nietzsche-quoting songwriter describes as Southern noir. “My songs can be a little cynical and fatalistic,” Rabell says. “I mean, I appreciate happy songs, and they have their place. But when I personally sit down to write, it’s just not what interests me. I’ve actually lost co-writers by saying bluntly, ‘I have no desire to finish that song—it’s way too saccharine.’ But I think I come by it honest. I mean, I grew up singing Patsy Cline, but I was also raised learning classical music like Beethoven’s 5th and Moonlight Sonata on the piano. The first song I ever remember writing—spoiler alert: it didn’t make the album—was a heavy-handed and melodramatic piano instrumental in C minor. I was probably only 10 years old at the time.”

While the songs that did make the cut for Immortal were written before Rabell’s breast cancer diagnosis, the album plays like a prognostication of her impending battle with the disease. Of course, her perspective on the lyrics she’d written—especially for the title track “Immortal” and “Simple Song”—shifted dramatically when facing her bleak new reality. “‘Immortal’ was about imagining a worst-case scenario where you lose someone you love, and it’s terrifying. The thought would come out of nowhere and make me cry. But when I wrote the song, it was still an exercise in fiction. It was me saying to my husband, ‘I never want to lose you.’ Just lie to me and say we’ll always be immortal. But last year, that fearful idle thought very quickly went from an exercise in theory to an exercise in reality. And it made the song much more real and vivid and meaningful to sing. Now when I tell my story and play that song, it impacts people more deeply because I feel it more deeply. I’ve really lived it.”

It was a similar situation with “Ride the Wolf,” originally written about conquering one’s fears, including “empowering #metoo commentary about overcoming being a victim” with “some sexual overtones” thrown in for good measure. “I never thought it would end up being this family-friendly cancer anthem,” Rabell says. To explain, her best friend helped kick things off by giving Rabell a little stuffed wolf pup for good luck before her first cancer surgery. Meanwhile, Rabell’s aunt—who was also undergoing chemo around the same time—listened to “Ride the Wolf” and had a trippy, chemo-induced fever dream about the song being some kind of Tom Pettyesque “Won’t Back Down”-style anthem. Everyone in the dream had stuffed wolf pups, and they were throwing them on stage while Rabell played. “So my aunt started buying wolf pups for her chemo buddies and sharing the song with them. Since then, fortunately and unfortunately, I’ve made lots of new friends who are undergoing cancer treatment. Whenever possible, I will give them a wolf pup and tell them about the song. It’s evolved into this unexpected empowerment anthem with a real-life wolfpack family. It’s a great example of how, once you put your song out into the world, you don’t get to decide what it means—other people get to decide what it means to them.”