That Haley Heynderickx’s debut album exists at all is a testament to her tenacity. The singer-songwriter’s initial attempts to record a full-length, following the modest success of her 2016 Fish Eyes EP, collapsed. First, sessions in a cold barn just outside her adopted hometown of Portland sapped her energy and confidence. Then, a self-funded effort sapped her bank account. Even her third attempt, which ultimately yielded I Need to Start a Garden, was fraught with obstacles: Routine technical difficulties in the studio made for endless false starts and do-overs.
Eight songs ultimately made their way to tape, and Heynderickx’s mettle shows through in all of them. I Need to Start a Garden carves paths through loneliness and confesses long-harbored uncertainty, doing both with the acuity of someone comfortable enough to be honest about her doubts. Though the album is supported by a number of other musicians, Heynderickx’s craft feels solitary. In many passages, she accompanies herself on just acoustic or electric guitar, using a fingerpicking technique adapted from the style she practiced as a kid taking lessons from a local bluegrass player. Often, she pulls delicate, melodic tendrils and driving bass rhythms from her instrument simultaneously. “I’m just a sucker for little details—and a loner at times—so I have to become my own bass player,” she recently said.
Loner that she is, Heynderickx tends to turn her incisive gaze inward, writing from the feelings in her heart and the visions in her head. When other people do surface in her songs, they appear almost as faceless silhouettes—like in the aptly titled “No Face,” where an aloof partner leaves Heynderickx to wonder what about her is so wrong. “Jo” names its subject, but captures her in uncertain terms, with only the tense of the lyrics suggesting that she’s no longer around. Heynderickx demurs when it comes to the specifics, instead using metaphorical language to capture Jo through the fuzzy, romantic lens of memory: Her kindness was “like honeycomb holding the bee in the folds.”
More animate are the characters Heynderickx invents to keep herself company. In her “Untitled God Song,” she imagines her creator as a vision in knockoff Coach, conjuring sunsets when she forgets to shut off her headlights. Heynderickx writes here with an expansive, inclusive understanding of feminine perfection that feels uplifting, even if the theism that frames it is inaccessible to some listeners. The specimens that populate “The Bug Collector” are among her most imaginative: a vindictive centipede, a priest reincarnated as a praying mantis, and a grumpy millipede, personified by brass voices that banter with Heynderickx’s spry guitar as she tries to remove them from her home, lest they ruin her loved one’s “perfect morning.”
It’s hard to imagine Heynderickx singing about anthropomorphic insects with a straight face, and indeed, well-timed levity is a crux of her songwriting. She’s inclined to break up moments of intense emotional candor with spurts of humor. No song does this more effectively than the album’s lead single, “Oom Sha La La.” Here, Heynderickx likens her mental state to the decaying contents of her fridge, admits to being “doubtful of all that [she has] dreamed of,” and then launches into a chorus of gleefully delivered nonsense syllables. It’s a song about embracing the absurdity of the everyday when the big picture is hidden from view; she ends it by frantically shouting the declaration that titles the album. Much ink has been spilled on the topic of young people today, their gardens, and the perennial effort to combat existential doubt by cultivating something beautiful. Haley Heynderickx may not have a garden just yet, but if beauty can cure uncertainty, this album should be enough for now.
