Squirrel Flower
Tomorrow’s Fire
POLYVINYL
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Squirrel Flower’s music has never sounded small. Even as far back as songwriter Ella Williams’ earliest recordings—self-released and DIY as they might have been—there was a heft to her music, a quiet and subtle force recalling a film score reaching its crescendo. Yet even among this power intrinsic to her work, her latest record Tomorrow’s Fire is something else entirely. I had to check multiple times to confirm this, but the album is only 34 minutes long. I still don’t quite buy it. How could such a slight record swallow me whole? How could it bowl me over so thoroughly? “World-building” is usually a term reserved for high-fantasy novels and science-fiction TV series, but Williams constructs something close to an entire universe within that half hour and change.
Tomorrow’s Fire marks Squirrel Flower’s third album since 2020, and follows 2021’s Planet (i). This creative momentum has gained Williams a significant amount of attention both within her local Chicago scene and beyond, and has evidently attracted a killer team of collaborators. When you can bring in experienced players like Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughn, War on Drugs bassist Dave Hartley, and Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman to paint the edges of your canvas, you don’t hesitate.
This is also the best a Squirrel Flower record has ever sounded from a production standpoint, with duties handled by both Williams and Alex Farrar, whose work with Indigo De Souza and Snail Mail has recently garnered him attention. The difference is clear in moments like “I don’t use a trashcan,” a song Williams first released back in 2015 but reimagines here as the record’s opening track. It’s a relatively quiet song when compared to what follows, but its pristine, spare production is just the kind of lean-in introduction that shines its soft light on the rest of the record.
Once it has its hook into you, it’s hard to overstate just how affecting and effective Tomorrow’s Fire is throughout. Williams has always been an evocative songwriter, weaving the personal and the universal in a way that makes a song about global issues like climate change feel like a whispered secret among lifelong friends. While Tomorrow’s Fire doesn’t carry this theme as much as its title might suggest, Williams remains fascinated by the natural world and metaphorical power therein. Whether it’s the moon casting spells on “Almost Pulled Away,” the crumbling mountains of “Stick,” or the storm washing away the family garden in “Finally Rain,” there’s a grandeur given to every moment, an ideal match for a vocalist as quietly powerful as Williams.
The life of a working artist is also a chief concern of Williams throughout Tomorrow’s Fire, the album’s title itself a reference to the need for hope to provide solace where something more tactile may not be as readily available as one might hope. “Doing my best is a full-time job, but it doesn’t pay the rent,” Williams sings on “Full Time Job,” a song that captures the feeling of exhaustion that’s becoming increasingly universal for the life of working creatives.
I could reference a dozen other moments when Williams taps into something damn near transcendent on Tomorrow’s Fire, but even on an album as accomplished as this, there remains one song standing head and shoulders above the rest: “When a Plant Is Dying” is a heavy, humid, and devastating bit of songwriting, as deliberate and searing as Jason Molina at his most cathartic. “When a plant is dying, it throws down seeds for growing,” sings Williams amid an earsplitting deluge of guitars from Kaufman and Lenderman—the theme of death and rebirth clawing desperately for signs of hope among the endless grinding of life. It’s the kind of song that a great record can be built around, and one that might well be a sign of things to come for this incredibly gifted songwriter.
