"A Little Love" by Kenzie Webley

I'm sure Kenzie Webley fans can get a bit frustrated by waiting for releases: her new single "A Little Love" comes out more than two years after its predecessor "February" and her debut album ‘All of the Fallen Stars' was virtually two years before that.

However  Kenzie first attracted our attention while she was still at school and with younger musicians with plenty of talent it's totally impossible not to delight in the sort of academic and now professional success which they then experience in other avenues, even if it slows any momentum on the musical front: and Kenzie has certainly enjoyed plenty of such successes: so much so that it's more of a case of celebrating that she still has time for writing than bemoaning the wait. And as I always say, keeping your audience in anticipation is not a bad thing.

The same circumstances also aid quality control. Without delving too far into matters of chickens and eggs, it's worth noting both the consistent high quality of Kenzie's work and the context of producing it all while engaged just as intensely in other activity: if you have little time for creativity compared with a full time musician, you'd best make sure what you do is the best you're capable of.

That said, it's equally worth noting that when Kenzie writes, she chooses to light upon subjects of acute personal emotional experience & how can that not produce top quality work? "A Little Love" continues that trend as it's "..about the slow process of losing someone you care about and finding a way to let them go.."

Rather than churning out content to show that she can, Kenzie instead opts to articulate her deep feelings, possibly using the medium of song to process them & it's hardly difficult to speculate on how she may find this therapeutic.

This sort of material, while stimulating our respect and admiration, can sometimes be a little too intense (I can think of excellent songs which nevertheless I find hard to play for example), but she has two ripostes to this.

One is that, however the specific inspiration songs like this had for her, she goes for situations which most of us can relate too. This is not self-centred writing but an empathetic sharing (I'm tempted to draw a parallel with the field she has chosen for her career here).

The second is simple: Kenzie has a way with a melody. I don't really approve of sugar coating pills in lyrics (that's a bit patronising) but I think easing people into & then through a sad song, a bit of beauty counterpoints the melancholy & can suggest beauty within the pain.

Kenzie has always tended in the direction of keeping it simple (with the quantities of truth involved in her songs, it would be a very silly move to smother them with over arrangement) and "A Little Love" is her at her most affecting best. I find it hard to believe that no-one hearing it will not be profoundly moved as it speaks so eloquently to what we have to deal with.

I do hope though that my next Kenzie Webley review gets written before 2028….