Haley Heynderickx’s “Gemini” Is Reminder to Stop Hating on Yourself
The Portland folk-rocker makes going through it sound utterly gorgeous on her new song.
There’s a popular Emerson quote that, half my life ago, I pinned to my dorm-room bulletin board: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” A salve for the anxious mind, I would tell myself those words while reviewing the footage of the day’s events in bed, inevitably cringing over things done or said. “Gemini,” a new song from Portland singer-songwriter Haley Heynderickx, took me back to that dorm room while also speaking to the self-sabotage inflicted by so many of us creative folks.
The song immediately brings to mind a small dark room, with Heynderickx describing a woman in the corner claiming she’s a former version of herself, someone who has made many mistakes (and you better believe she catalogs ‘em). But then she softens towards this past self, because she’s the same person who once made her “pull the fuck over just to stare at purple clover off the highway.” “Gemini” portrays self compassion as a continual journey, all the way through to the song’s pacing and release of tension. Heynderickx finger-picks a driving outlaw country melody while she dwells on her flaws, and once that shift in attitude takes hold halfway through, she welcomes the band and the melody grows far less tentative. The song blooms into something beautiful, and I’m not just using plant-related imagery because Heynderickx constantly references nature in her music. The second half of “Gemini” gives me that warm, unfurling feeling of Yellow House-era Grizzly Bear, which her last single, “Foxglove,” also channeled. Heynderickx’s ambling guitar style has a bit of Daniel Rossen’s intricacy in it, but “Gemini” also kinda reminds me of the candlelit folk of Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Heynderickx, for those who don’t know, released a promising debut LP called I Need To Start A Garden in 2018. A Lot has changed in the realm of plaintive-voiced folk-rock since then, namely the Phoebe Bridgers-ification of the genre both in sound and popularity level. (“Gemini” even references how much time has passed in its lyrics.) But I Need To Start A Garden was more like Heynderickx’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness, the emotionally searing, bare-bones folk record that made Angel Olsen a star back in 2014. With Heynderickx’s forthcoming LP, Seed of a Seed, I could imagine a more fleshed-out, full-band direction that takes both her songwriting and sound to another level, much as Angel did in the albums following BYFFNW. I’m looking forward to hearing it—I could use a new take on a garden song.
