On Nov. 3, singer-songwriter Amelia Day released her sophomore EP (Extended Play), “Little One.” Coming off the heels of her 2022 folk EP “Eastward of Eden,” “Little One” is a love letter to the stages of growing up, wrapped up in a 6-track eclectic patchwork of genres.
Taking piano lessons as a child and writing music since middle school, Day began pursuing music professionally her freshman year of college. “I first started fully independent — produced, mixed and mastered — fully on my own, and it sounds like I did,” Day joked, “which is not a good thing … but it was a necessary first step to start putting myself out there.”
The EP starts off with a reverb-heavy haze of birdsong and guitar picking in her song, “Pause.” Day’s voice emerges gently from the soundscape, telling the listener to cross off their to-do list, and “[s]tart the day right.” The lyrics alternate between the narrator’s day-to-day conversation with their lover — “Don’t you know / Baby, I already ate / I’m runnin’ late” — and descriptions of nature, flowers-in-hair and the breeze. Layers of vocals sigh above the guitar line, as Day asks the listener “[a]ren’t you ready for it all to pause?” — the song is a 3-minute time lapse of summer mornings.
Where “Pause” is an indie-folk, bedroom pop reverie, Day’s voice soars in queer, folk-rock anthem “Therapist’s Wet Dream,” the EP’s fourth track. With lyrics like, “So don’t run too fast or / you’ll fall / Ain’t nothin’ ever hurt / that never mattered at all,” “Therapist’s Wet Dream” is reminiscent of icons like Indigo Girls, Brandi Carlile, and The Chicks.
The song explores Day’s own coming-of-age experiences, entering into relationships as a newly-minted adult but also an all-too-common experience of queer youth who “feel discarded by their religion,” Day said. She sings: “[p]rayed to God these few / months for him to call me back / But I think he’s out of office, ‘cause his line’s / got slack.”
“[T]hat line […] really epitomizes this idea where I felt very alone for the first time, I didn’t have my family to lean on, I didn’t have the same friends or community to lean on, and I didn’t have my religion to lean on anymore,” Day said. “It feels like you’re reaching out for that same line of communication and comfort and not having it on the other end anymore”
The final track on the EP and titular song is “Little One.” With bouncy acoustic guitar and a lilting chromatic melody, “Little One” is a slightly self-effacing love ballad to Day’s younger self. The song encapsulates a universal ache to return to childhood and do it all over again.
Day sings, “[y]ou might be dumb sometimes / but girl you’re mine,” and pokes fun at her younger self’s fashion choices, while simultaneously encouraging herself to live life unafraid of judgment, with saccharine lyrics like “[y]ou’re still young little one / you’re havin’ fun little one.”
“Little One” is an ode to queer coming-of-age; each song a vignette of a different stage of growing up, as Day experiments with her musical style in her own right.
“It’s just been a really, really cool road” Day said, “connecting with other musicians, getting more plugged into the community in Nashville, and working on projects that have more a thematic or sonic alignment rather than a smattering of singles every so often” — and she isn’t stopping any time soon.
Amelia Day will be playing two EP release shows featuring Katie Lynne Sharbaugh and Riley Whittaker on Dec. 7 at The East Room in Nashville, TN and on Jan. 4 at The Spanish Ballroom in Tacoma, WA.
