Keeper E.
The Sparrows All Find Food
Halifax, NS
LHM Records
RIYL: Sylvan Esso; the Postal Service; being seen

Recently I was doomscrolling while listening to Keeper E.’s The Sparrows All Find Food, and I saw an unrelated tweet by writer Brennan McCracken that now pops into my head everytime I listen to Keeper E’s record. McCracken’s tweet reads: “Seeing and being seen.”

The Sparrows All Find Food is a record about seeing, and it will make you feel seen. On “Please Don’t Tell Me,” a glistening, standout tune, Adelle Elwood (Keeper E.) underlines this notion: “I’ve been looking and seeing and hearing lots,” she sings. Swimming in warming waves of electro-pop across the album’s seven songs, Elwood taps into her wants, needs, and regrets. Her anxiety is palpable and, at times, incredibly heavy as she navigates personal turmoil and climate grief. “We’ll all be underwater someday,” Elwood laments on “Telling the Truth.”

When I listen to The Sparrows All Find Food, I find myself in “I’m Sorry to My Spider Plant,” a forlorn anthem for anybody who has neglected (or overloved) a plant, whose instruments are covered in dust, or whose to-read pile is precariously stacked like a game of Jenga. I’m also in “Telling the Truth,” which has a line that made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it because of how precisely it summarizes me: “I think I’m the most serious woman to call herself a silly girl.” How reassuring it is to find out that you’re not alone.

– Laura Stanley