Around this time last year, Jordan Reynolds had just unveiled two “reimagined” songs from her panoramic debut EP Always a Good Reason. Since moving to Atlanta from Bowling Green, Kentucky the year before, she’d fleshed out her alt-country solo sojourn into a full-fledged caravan, and finally we could hear the whole gang at work with steel guitars and soft choirs raised to the rafters. Live, they had a woozy majesty that matched the heart-rending confessions of Neighbor Lady, and they were already ripping out new tunes that left us onlookers breathless.

cover for Rose Hotel's - I'll Only Come If It's a Yes.

So here we are in 2019. Reynolds has finally culled together a full album of new material with her motley crew, and the Rose Hotel once again opens its doors to lovers who have stories to tell. Funny thing, though—just as I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes expands Reynolds’ heart-to-heart dialogues, I too have gleaned insight on the fishhook that snares and drags even the most diligent minds astray. And I tell you: sometimes these rooms shimmer too much with the lazy afternoon’s golden glow, when the light blurs out the hard edges and shadows. But sometimes, the sun confounds, and lucid visions return in a rush.

To understand exactly what works on this LP, one has to understand the tightrope strung across Rose Hotel’s rafters. In Reynolds’ lyrics, the protagonist often has to balance her own independence with the wishes of her partner; here, songs like “Would You Believe Me” and “10K” breeze through that precarious act as if the tightrope were a yard wide. But it’s easy to contradict yourself and trip with matters of the heart, as Reynolds points out across I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes. “If it ain’t hard, then it’s not love / And if it’s hard, then it’s not love,” she sings on the deceptively cheery “If It Ain’t Hard.” Adepts of romance can recognize the truth behind that riddle at once.

We were speaking of balance, though. I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes floats gracefully between introspection and exclamation; two of the most vivid scenes from the album mark the extremes of that spectrum. We can hear the heartbeat of our narrator as she parses through indecision in the Joni Mitchell-like ballad “Blue Light.” Elsewhere, “Better” makes the most of Reynolds’ expanded all-star band (which at various points throughout the record includes members of Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Karaoke, Shepherds, and Palm Sunday) for a frank and heart-stopping climax: “I know that you’re keeping me on the line… please stay on the line.”

Somewhere in the middle, the flute-laced “Jamie” plays out like a quiet chat by the morning’s light—a fleeting moment of trust, bound to dissolve when the sun rises. All three couch pleas to a wayward (possibly polyamorous?) lover, where reason and intuition merge into arguments with dream-like logic, confessions that normally can’t be spoken. “Is this only a passing season? Or will you be my only reason?” Reynolds asks on “Blue Light,” and the question echoes across the album—never answered, but never denied either.

Given these mystic visions, the easy-going twang and distant clouds that veil I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes feel more than a little cumbersome. There’s enough warp in the rustic woodwork of “Better” and “Running Behind” to scratch a few scabs, but nothing really draws blood. They’re close, mind—if the dreampop bop “Write Home” were just a little less hazy, the central paradox might sink in with more of the intended existential dread: “Won’t you write home / once you find home / you won’t find home.” Yep, that’s another riddle for the adepts out there. As a recent initiate myself, I’ve only just begun to apprehend that terrible secret, and it kills me that such potent lore is couched in such a rosy vessel.

Well. Perhaps my studies have rendered my vision flavescent, but the light does not fool me yet. I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes shines like both common glass and rare crystal—both leave the same rainbow reflection, but only one sings to the sensitive touch of the sage.

Rose Hotel’s debut full length, I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes, is out May 31. Pre-orders are available here.

Rose Hotel will celebrate the release of I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes on Fri., May 31 at 529 alongside Chick Wallace, Palm Sunday, and Sunset Pig. Doors open at9 p.m. Admission is $8 in advance or $10 at the door. 21+ to enter.

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