Martha Scanlan & Jon Neufeld - Save It For Later (2024) [Hi-Res]

On their latest release, Save It For Later, Martha Scanlan and Jon Neufeld continue to cut across traditional genres, creating a musical narrative that is both expansive and immersive. Save It For Later is a collection of 8 cover songs, ranging from the expected (Guy Clark, Willie Nelson) to less so (Beyoncé, Radiohead).

The transcendent honesty in Scanlan’s delivery serves as a kind of alchemical bearing witness that transforms these often larger than life songs into quiet hymns of nature and the human experience. While Neufeld’s skill as producer, as innovative and improvisational as his guitar playing, makes the transitions between spare acoustic renditions and lush symphonic performances feel seamless.

Their fourteen years of friendship, touring and recording reverberates throughout and pulls these songs together into the deeper current that has most characterized the duo’s work over the years, so what might occur as a departure instead feels like a revelation, a homecoming. Scanlan and Neufeld inhabit these songs so fully that we forget that they were never theirs, or ours, to begin with.