Indie Music Album Reviews

Hayden Elizabeth - Nomad

10/27/2021

Hayden Elizabeth

Nomad
self-released; 2021

3.9 out of 5

By Jay Freeman

Hayden Elizabeth is a singer/songwriter from Portland, Oregon. She wrote her debut EP Nomad while backpacking before beginning her first year at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The album was recorded and mixed in Portland by Troy Welstad and mastered in Nashville by Richard Dodd. Hiking in Oregon is a huge part of Elizabeth’s life and much of that is reflected in her songs. While walking out on various trails, she wrote every song and listened to every new mix reviewed here. Collectively ,Nomad is a record that showcases the life cycle of a relationship. The first song is about falling in love and the last one is about falling out of it. Hiking is how Elizabeth processed everything that happened. Among her influences, she looks to Stevie Nicks for lyrical inspiration and Sheryl Crow for everything on being a woman who plays guitar.

The opening track “Bugs” has a hopeful sound – bright, with a refreshing acoustic rock style. I like this song’s melody and overall optimism and the joy the comes with falling in love. Next in line is “Before I Met You” and it’s a very short number with a beautiful vocal melody and backing vocal track. Elizabeth’s guitar drives the song’s rhythm which reminded me of gently rolling train and her message is short and sweet. “Before I met you” all hope was lost and there was no chance of being with anyone, but now, being “all caught up – it feels like the sun.” Yes, few things in life bring greater joy than knowing that you’re actually “in love” with someone, especially when it takes you in and consumes you. Moving on to “Mountains” is a song that reveals something about your life that you didn’t see coming – “I thought I knew better / I thought I knew wrong from right / But I’ve got mountains to climb.” She seems to be suggesting that the honeymoon period of falling in love is showing signs of “falling out” and that there are some things she needs to figure out on her own.

“I Used My Heart and Not My Head” is another short tune featuring just Elizabeth and her guitar. Her playing on this one is delicate and graceful, but intricate, too. Here, the love story goes through a period of self-reflection and realization – perhaps quite a bit of it – to a point where decisions that come from the heart overshadow ones from the head. The last track is also the EP’s title – “Nomad” and as stated earlier, this one’s about falling out of love and about the reasons why it’s time to move on (“The only things keeping me here were our old ties”). A full band of musicians back Elizabeth’s lovely voice here, with rich, warm sounds of folk rock well produced. The singer signs off on post-love doubts (“Did I love you enough / or just enough to keep you near”) and past feelings of being in love – “This nomad needs to find her place / and take a chance to breathe in time and space / while I am headed down the interstate / I know I’ll find my way.” And like being in love, falling out of love can be just as vivid and surreal – where life happens in “slow motion.”

Hayden Elizabeth’s Nomad delivers a universal, timeless story – one that we all have experienced to some degree or another. She captured briefly in song a moment in her life that most likely will repeat itself somewhere down the road, but in a different context. Next time around that corner, or up those Oregon mountains, past lessons about being in love and out of love will be remembered – just one of many in this thing called life.