Time is the universal healer, but not all wounds close. When LeeAnn Peppers speaks of “The Fire of Love” in her new single, she’s not fanning desire or cooing for a lover. This ballad instead points to loss, and the grief that smothers the mourner after a dear source of light has been snuffed too soon: “There is smoke in these lungs / where once a song for you did burn.” She sings this like a hymn, not a dirge, as violins gently lift Peppers’ own song higher. Cracked hands and tide-washed shores signal the passing of days and years, yet neither the fire nor the smoke ever truly dies: “There is blood in this heart / that beats for days from a single spark.”
Peppers writes of embers from her own past. With her upcoming album, For Asha, With Hope, she dedicates scenes of rural splendor to a dear friend from college lost ten years ago to cancer. Even the title echoes the winter-touched cabin where Bon Iver penned For Emma, Forever Ago; yet Peppers’ poetry seeks to channel the same psychogeography as Sufjan Stevens, as the protagonist travels across the rolling hills of Georgia all the way out to Ohio. In “The Fire of Love,” though, we see the most concise portrait of that journey to peace—and, as the flames continue to crackle at the song’s end, we know that the memory of her friend still burns bright, even under the ashes.
For Asha, With Hope is out Oct. 13.
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