W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

Late Great- Laura Stevenson (Really Records)

There’s no way around the fact that Laura Stevenson’s 2025 release on friend and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock’s Really Records is a breakup album.  But in typical Stevenson fashion it isn’t the kind of breakup album filled with anger and venom.  No, Late Great is an album about heart break, anguish, sadness and getting through the dark days towards the light of a new dawn.  Laura has always been a poignant writer that wears her heart on her sleeve and nowhere is this more evident than on Late Great.  Stevenson’s songwriting style has always been super personal.  They come off like snippets from a personal journal meant for no one but the writer herself.  The brutal honesty in the words “I’d scale the side of it, to fall again. I’d sail the span of it, to stay right here, and I’d make the same mistakes to have half a life” from “I Want to Remember It All” are nothing short of tragically gorgeous as Laura sings over and over the song’s crescendo moment “to have half a life, to have half a life…”  Then in a song like “Honey” we witness Laura dealing not only with the depression which she has always been quite open about.  She sings on “Honey” the words Tell your tale behind your beaded veil, I am escapable I am unable not to fail, fail anyone I ever met, I’m not enough, I never am, an enemy, a nobody, I’m not enough, I’ll never be it honey  but as the songs moves along she comes around to realize that what were perceived originally as her own shortcomings were never that at all.  You say all that I have is nothing, nothing to give. You say all that I got is nothing, nothing left. But nobody can fill it for you, fill it for you. Have to let you hate me for it if you have to.  Those shortcomings were never hers, they were always the shortcomings of her former lover.  Late Great is filled with similar gut wrenching stories of self loathing, self care and realizations that all one can do is live life to the best of one’s ability.  Life is precious, living that life is all encompassing.