There’s something magnetic about a song that feels like it was written in the music room and sung in the sightlines of the stars. Sarah Banker sings about that on her latest single, “Into The Heart,” the title track from her new EP that’s every bit as lush with feeling as the landscapes that inspired it.
With musical roots that reach the stages of childhood theater, Banker brings a storyteller’s sensibility to her songwriting. But it wasn’t until she picked up the guitar a few short years ago that she found her own artistic voice. Her background in Cultural Anthropology has profoundly informed her songwriting, where she writes lyrics from a place of human resilience and admiration, and “Into The Heart” is a shining example of that frequency. The track feels intimate and expansive. Skimmed in folk-pop textures thin enough to be warmed by body heat, the production overseen by Jeff Franca of Thievery Corporation sounds natural, even elemental. It was appropriately recorded in Franca’s 9,000-foot-high studio in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The sound of that altitude seems to have bled into the sound itself, air-dried acoustic guitars with gentle percussion and Banker’s voice, which carries both a tenderness and a quiet strength, somehow floating together like wind through pine trees.
“Into The Heart” is not a song, but that moment when everything stands still, that breath one takes between the storms. It speaks of change, reflecting the very shift Banker made from student to performer, from introspective to expressive. Authentic and straightforward yet full of feeling, the track shines brilliantly. It’s an acknowledgment that growth often starts with soft, raw openness.
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