Langhorne Slim, strawberry mansion & the search for peace of mind

There’s complexity and humor, even a certain absurdness to life itself, that Langhorne Slim’s music seeks to make sense of. His songs are unassuming, subtle and ever so occasionally damning in their perceptive, knowing just when and where to glisten or dim, holler or whisper. But any simplicity on the surface, is somewhat deceptive. The further you dig, the more you’ll find that realizations are often complicated, even profound. Hinting at a larger picture that speaks not just to something bigger, but something vast. In its own way, it’s about existence – how we revel in it and how we cope with it. How it’s ordinary and extraordinary. “I’ll sing my song when my song appears,” he announces on the new double album Strawberry Mansion, and just like that, the mysterious aspects of an unknowable process are brought to mind alongside the idea that the wheels will turn when they are meant to. Its a meaningful notion thats especially poignant now, when it feels like the wheels are nowhere to be found. To the records benefit, the pandemic and escalating madness of our new version of modern life is never mentioned by name, allowing Strawberry Mansion to stand on its own, untied to any one timeframe or circumstance. Although for those who will tell the next generations what it was really like to be here when, the anxiety in “Lonesome Times,” “Panic Attack” and “Alright To Hide” will be artifacts of sorts, unmistakably linked to the odd, out of body like experience of 2020 and its untold reverberations. How we were all tuned in and tuned out simultaneously. How deeply weird it was to wear masks and how we got used to it alarmingly fast. How the noise that surrounds us grew to untenable volumes. “Something’s going on out there, the birds are acting strange,” he sings, flawlessly illustrating how something, everywhere, just doesn’t feel right.  

Taking its name from the real life Philadelphia neighborhood where both his grandfathers grew up, Langhorne Slim paints Strawberry Mansion as both a literal place and something much greater. “There is a strawberry mansion for all,” he tells us, and for the first time, it feels like he is describing an environment that is equal parts mystical and abstract. A place within where we can be at peace. But it also builds upon a beautiful heart-on-sleeve songbook that has always valued connection – the kind we seek and the kind we inherit – by celebrating the sacred ties that remain destined to bring families, friends and strangers together until the end of time.    

Strawberry Mansion is available now

by Caitlin Phillips (Playback Photography)
03.09.21