Feb 27, 2023
By Mark Redfern
Photography by Sophie Kuller
Heather Woods Broderick is releasing a new album, Labyrinth, on April 7 via Western Vinyl. Now she has shared its third single, “Admiration.” Listen below.
A press release says that Broderick wrote the song “during a trip to her former home in coastal Oregon during the wildfires in 2020, while alone and in an area surrounded by heavy smoke on all sides.”
Broderick further explains: “I was scared and missing my partner, not knowing whether I should evacuate or which road I’d have the best chance to get out on. Amidst my fear and feelings of helplessness amplifying the current state of the world, I was also remembering what I have to be grateful for—trying to use fear and uncertainty as a vehicle for hope.”
The album includes “Blood Runs Through Me,” a new song Broderick shared in November that was #2 on our Songs of the Week list. When Labyrinth was announced in January, Broderick shared its second single, “Crashing Against the Sun,” via a music video. “Crashing Against the Sun” was also one of our Songs of the Week.
D. James Goodwin co-produced the album, which is Broderick’s fifth. She’s based in Los Angeles, but was born in Maine.
Broderick had this to say about the new album’s themes in a previous press release: “Many of us yearn for stillness and peace, as an escape from the movement all around us. Yet movement is perpetual, happening all the time on some level. It’s as wild as the wind, yet eternally predictable in its inevitability. It is linear in part, but infinite in its circuitry. Our lives just punctuate it.”