HAYLIE DAVIS - Wandering Star

Of little wandering stars appearing in the new (?) US country firmament, several have popped up in recent years, from Pearl Charles to Mikaela Davis, just to name a couple of less flashy but no less worthy names, not to mention the questionable success of Ella Langley, by now on practically everyone's lips.
It's a phenomenon that's anything but new — what's increased is mostly the sheer volume, and in sporadic cases the visibility, of a songwriting tradition that inexorably draws on the harmonic canons of legends like Emmilou Harris and Dolly Parton, and elsewhere tends to fish back out the moods of Joni Mitchell or, sticking to more recent names and approaches, the theatricality of Weyes Blood.
The fascination is considerable regardless, but the quality of the "revival" isn't always guaranteed, and one often ends up running into faded photocopies of a past that's too glorious and unrepeatable.

California's Haylie Davis fits into this context — as potentially slippery as it is enchanting — with the grace of someone who knows her craft and has no intention of overdoing it. Proof of this is her debut album, whose title, "Wandering Star," ties in perfectly with her starting points, and lays out what's been mentioned above across a ballad that dredges up, right down to the marrow, the melodic piano writing of Judee Sill, as on "Golden Age," and another where the piano work tends to bring back to the eardrums the sweetness of inexplicably forgotten gems like Janie Fricke ("Born To Be Blue").
In short, it's urban cowboy mixed with finely crafted country-pop that unfolds across the eleven songs of an overall lovable record, one with which to chase the ghosts of an apparently timeless era.
Haylie sings like a nightingale caught between joys and sorrows the whole way through, and in the airier moments of the bunch, like "Give Me A Rainbow" — one of those songs that would have collected plenty of coins in the jukeboxes of old American saloons — she slips nimbly away, behaving like an angel who's lost her bearings to paradise.

"Wandering Star" holds within it the most country-flavored spirit of Juice Newton ("Young Man") and could inadvertently draw younger listeners into delving deeper into the caresses of a Karen Carpenter, if only to pile on the notable references once more. On this gentle ride across the prairie, Haylie Davis never overdoes it, and between an acoustic love ballad with her gorgeous voice front and center ("Mourning Dove") and a spirited pop escape ("Lonely Too"), she ultimately delivers a genuinely convincing effort, one to listen to and listen to again without ever worrying too much about where the remake ends and the present begins.      

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15/08/2026