KNOWN for crafting haunted, deeply atmospheric folk tunes, Valley Maker is the solo project of US singer-songwriter Austin Crane. With the three albums to his name, the most recent being 2018’s ‘Rhododendron’, Crane has shared his first new song of 2020; a beautifully crafted six-minute epic called ‘Mockingbird’.

Marking Valley Maker’s first release since relocating to his native Columbia, ‘Mockingbird’ is a delicate, atmospheric number that finds Crane reflecting on settling back into an old, familiar space and community. A song that feels very of its time, it’s about patience and embracing uncertainty; his intensely mellow vocals joined by sweet female harmonies, delicate folk melodies and slight electronic flourishes. With an ability to completely transport the listener to a far-off location for a few minutes a time, there’s a very timeless quality to Crane’s songwriting and existential lyricism and this shines through once again on ‘Mockingbird’.

He said “I wrote ‘Mockingbird’ within a week of moving to Columbia, SC, having just left my home of seven years in Seattle to return to the area and community I grew up in. It’s a song about trying to settle in while feeling quite unsettled. My wife, Megan, and I had just bought a small, historic house that needed (still needs!) a lot of work, and wanting to do something tangible and forward looking, I planted my favorite tree in the yard: a Japanese Maple. There’s a line in the song that acknowledges how I’ll “sit for a while and watch it grow,” as a way of accepting that season of uncertainty and transition. I guess when I wrote the song, I didn’t know how long I would be doing just that. So while “Mockingbird” was written a few months before the pandemic upended life as we knew it, the song resonates deeply, for me, with this strange season of life. Both the song and video meditate on memory, time, and aging; they both try to embrace the uncertainty, absurdity and beauty of life; and they reflect a feeling of being in-between places and communities.”

Check out the scenic video below.

Photo by Bree Burchfield.