Vinyl Wednesday: This Empty Northern Hemisphere

Gregory Alan Isakov

Welcome back to Vinyl Wednesday! This week I’m talking about another Apple Music find: This Empty Northern Hemisphere by Gregory Alan Isakov. I can’t remember if it was a recommendation or something that turned up on a playlist, but either way it was a good find. Isakov is a South-African born singer-songwriter now living and farming in Boulder, Colorado. This Empty Northern Hemisphere is his fourth studio album. Musically he’s a bit reminiscent of Iron & Wine with a heavy Leonard Cohen influence – his songs have that late-evenings-with-wine feeling to them, perfect for some quiet introspection alone or with friends. He has also been likened to Dylan and Springsteen, and lyrically (if not musically) I would say that’s an apt comparison. His songs have featured in a few commercials and on quite a number of TV shows, most notably Girls, Suits, Veronica Mars and The Haunting of Hill House. When he’s not making music Isakov is a farmer and gardener who studied horticulture at the buddhist-inspired Naropa University. He is also a talented photographer with a really lovely Instagram.

This Empty Northern Hemisphere has a sort of autumnal feel to it that I find really appealing. Yes, I know it’s late July, but I am a fall person and this is the time of year when I start really pining for cooler days and longer nights. I think it’s also relevant that Isakov is a gardener – people who grow things, present company included, have a particular awareness of the seasons and the weather. There’s a sense in Isakov’s lyrics of cycles ending, seasons changing and things coming to an end, the need to move on. Of long and stagnant summers spent biding one’s time until the cooler weather signals that it’s time to pack up and head on to our next stop. Even though Isakov is a newer artist to me, his music sounds like something I would have listened to in art school.

The album opens with the yearning, pensive Dandelion Wine. It feels like it’s setting the stage for a journey; I rolled out the day that the apples fell, Isakov sings. There’s a sense of nostalgia wound through the album, and a certain regret for the things left behind. The songs are all sung from the perspective of a narrator, but only the fourth track, Evelyn, gives the point of view of another character; in this case, the titular Evelyn, who has lost direction and works the graveyard shift alone in a gas station, but who dreams of leaving it all behind and driving west to LA. The idea of travel also features heavily on the album, with Isakov meandering around the map as he philosophizes about cars and birds, lost loves and the search for a place to call home. You can hear it on That Moon Song and Big Black Car, and as you listen you get the sense that the things and people left behind are as important, if not more, than whatever the narrator is traveling towards. I ain’t wondering where you are, Isakov sings on Idaho, assuring us that he clearly is. Finally in the penultimate track, If I Go I’m Goin’, Isakov’s narrator sings a plaintive love song to his house of memories as it burns down around him. This song was featured, fittingly and to great effect, on the final episode of Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. The album closes with One of us Cannot be Wrong, a simple and lovely Leonard Cohen cover accompanied by Brandi Carlile and an acoustic guitar.

This Empty Northern Hemisphere isn’t a showy album. The instrumentals are simple and the vocals never reach soaring heights. The lyrics, though narrative and lovely, manage to remain unpretentious. It’s an album of subtleties that invites introspection and a bit of reflection. Maybe it’s just the mood I’ve been in lately as I’ve been navigating a fairly significant life change that has me turning, as I usually do, to folky tunes with profound and poetic lyrics. If that’s the kind of mood you’ve been in too, it’s worth picking this one up. To listen to This Empty Northern Hemisphere in full find it on Apple Music, Google Play and Spotify. Or, as always, pick up a copy on vinyl. See you next week.

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